Samsung really pulled out all the stops in the S8 and S8+ specs department. Nothing but the best, which in this case is the current pair of flagship offers from both Qualcomm and Samsung's own silicon divisions. Of course, we are talking about the Exynos 8895 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 - both built on a cutting-edge 10nm manufacturing process.
In fact, word on the street is that the Korean giant might have been so enveloped in its quest for ultimate mobile performance that it actually hoarded all the initial Snapdragon 835 stock. This, allegedly, caused LG to resort to a Snapdragon 821 for the G6 and might have also forced Xiaomi to postpone the Mi 6. But at this point these are just speculations, of course.
Samsung claims there is virtually no performance variance between the pair. Both chips have a total of eight cores - a pretty standard setup. Qualcomm has its custom Kryo 280 cores working at 2.35 GHz. These do have a bit more wiggle room in terms of maximum frequency (2.45 GHz, as rated by Qualcomm), but this is what Samsung decided to go for. As for the Exynos 8895, it has four of redesigned M1 "Mongoose" V2 custom cores, clocked at 2.3 GHz and a less power-intensive cluster of four Cortex-A53 units, at 1.7 GHz.
There are some differences in the graphics department as well: an Adreno 540 on the Snapdragon 835 and a Mali-G71 MP20 on the Exynos 8895.
Based on these numbers alone, we reserve our right to remain skeptical about this performance parity claim. Again, we would love to test the Snapdragon 835 as well and we hope to get our hands on the US version pretty soon. Until then, however, we only have our Exynos review unit. It is the standard international one, so along with the Exynos chipset we also get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
Update: We have a Snapdragon 835 at hand and the benchmark results are in. Just as we expected, there is an observable performance difference between the pair. And it's not an insignificant one either.
Well, actually, that depends on how much you want to look into it. Our GeekBench CPU runs tend to favor the Exynos 8895, although performance deltas are small. Then again, the older GeekBench 3 seems to favor the 2.35 GHz Kryo 280 core in the Snapdragon over a 2nd-gen Mongoose 2.3 GHz one in single-threaded loads. This seems to be one of the readjusted things between the two iteration of the benchmark.
The same can be said about AnTuTu. While the older version seems to give the Snapdragon 835 a very slight edge, Samsung's own Exynos reigns supreme in AnTuTu 6. Since AnTuTu is a compound benchmark that includes GPU tests as well, the newer version could be seeing a boost based on tests for newer graphics API's and procedures.
And in the graphics department, the performance difference between the Exynos 8895 and the Snapdragon 835 is quite a bit more noticeable. On-screen GFXBench tests, the ones that arguably matter more to end users, show anywhere from 1 frame to 6 frames advantage in favor of the Mali-G71 GPU. Basemark X and Basemark ES 3.1 present the Exynos graphical superiority in an even clearer and easily quantifiable fashion.
As far as some other interesting comparisons go, we lined up some of the company's older flagships, like the S7 edge and the Note5. We also included the Note7, regardless of its demise and the S6 edge+, for their Exynos 7420 chips. To make things even more interesting, we threw in some of the new upper mid-rangers, like the Galaxy A7 (2017) and the C9 Pro.
As for the rest of the competitor lineup, it is a veritable who's who of today's smartphone elite. That being said, however, besides the mentioned Xperia XZ Premium, there is little variety in these ranks in terms of chipset choice. Most have a Snapdragon 821 (LG G6, HTC U Ultra, Pixel XL, Xiaomi Mi Note 2, Mi Mix, Mi 5s Plus), Huawei's own Kirin 960 is also a major presence (Mate 9, P10 Plus, Honor 8 Pro) and we even have a few Snapdragon 820 participants (LG V20, Sony XZs, ZTE Axon 7). On the other hand, the variance in display size and resolution, as well as pricing is huge.
So, let's dive in and kick things off with GeekBench 4. We can see the refreshed M1 "Mongoose" V2 cores do pretty well on their own - on par with the Cortex-A73 units in the Kirin 960 and only dwarfed by Apple's custom solution. However, it is multi-core where the Exynos 8895 really shines, taking smack from nobody and leading the pack with a good 200 or so points.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Anticipating some possible confusion with Galaxy S8+ results from various sources over the next few days, we would like to offer some insight on the current GeekBench situation. At the end of last month, the popular benchmark suite was updated to version 4.1. It changed quite a few things and as per the developer's own accounts, users can expect increases of up to 2% in single-core and 5% in multi-core scores. That means that results between GeekBench 4.0 and 4.1 are no longer directly comparable. We did run the newer version on the Galaxy S8+ and got 6754 and 1986 points, respectively. Thus, we have decided to do the fair thing and publish the older and comparable GeekBench 4.0 scores instead.
Moving on to more compound benchmarks, Basemark OS II and the newer OS 2.0 both tell a pretty identical story. We find the S8+ pretty much at the top of the food chain, only really contested by the iPhone 7 Plus.
Higher is better
Higher is better
AnTuTu 6 even has the tides changed in favor of the Galaxy S8+. It takes a slight edge over the iPhone 7 Plus. However, this seems like as good a time as any to remind you of the synthetic nature of these tests. The splendid real-life performance of the S8+ does shine through in the results, but they definitely shouldn't be interpreted literally.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Things aren't quite so clear-cut on the graphics side of things. The Mali-G71 MP20 is a true mobile graphics powerhouse, no question about it. It brings about the sort of power that will probably make console-grade gaming experiences possible on mobile down the line.
There are a few things to consider when analyzing the Mali-G71 MP20, as implemented inside the S8 and S8+. The main one, of course, being resolution. The new ultra-wide aspect ratio means about 576,000 extra pixels on top of QHD the GPU has to render on.
There is also the matter of proper support from game developers. Currently, Samsung is forced to play the middle-man between game engines and its new screen aspect ratio, offering both straight-forward support for the resolution, as well as resizing, fitting and cropping assistance. The latter is an imperfect solution and can sometimes lead to graphical errors and glitches - yet another batch of hurdles that early-adopters will have to endure.
Higher is better
Higher is better
However, it's not all that bad. Even today, many titles already support the wider aspect natively. Others scale and crop without any issue. We are happy to report that we couldn't really induce a crash in any game we tried but on the other hand we didn't try that many. The worst problems we managed to end up with are slightly cropped out controls around the very edges of the game interface and a few extra screen flashes while loading. All were pretty isolated and we can only expect improvements going forward.
As for actual on-screen performance, it quite understandably suffers a hit due to the lavish new resolution. Again, we will remind you that these are synthetic tests and any self-respecting game nowadays has the ability to scale back in quality or detail gracefully to ensure proper performance.
Higher is better
Higher is better
The Galaxy S8+ is a truly amazing gaming device and a pretty future-proof one as well. These Open GL ES 3.1 scores definitely speak for themselves.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
All things considered, the only problem we really had with the S8+, while using it as a gaming platform had to do with ergonomics, rather than performance. In its quest to abolish bezels, Samsung has left a pretty limited area for you to rest your fingers on when holding the phone horizontally. To mitigate this, the OS offers a special edge touch rejection while in game. It works pretty well and only leaves the user with the task to overcome any residual tendency to shy away from gripping the screen.
Once you get used to relying on that, and potentially master a shuffling vertical grip that is comfortable enough, you should have all it takes to fully leverage the powerhouse performance of the S8+ for any and all tasks. And for the non-gamers out there, it only takes a few stabs at spanning two split-screen apps over the screen to never want to go back.
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