The Samsung Galaxy S7 & S7 Edge Review, Part 1
by Joshua Ho on March 8, 2016 9:00 AM ESTSoC Performance
While we’re ready to move on to newer benchmarks for 2016, our system performance benchmarks from 2015 are still going to provide a pretty good idea for what to expect from the Galaxy S7 and Snapdragon 820 by extension. For those that are unfamiliar with what the Snapdragon 820 is, I’d reference our previous articles on the Snapdragon 820.
In essence, we’re looking at a 2x2 CPU configuration with 2.15 GHz Kryo cores for the performance cluster, and 1.6 GHz Kryo cores for the efficiency cluster. Binding the two clusters together are some power aware scheduling at the kernel level and a custom interconnect to handle coherency between the two clusters. Memory is also improved relative to the Snapdragon 810, with a bump to LPDDR4-1866 over the former's LPDDR4-1600. Of course, there's a lot more to talk about here, but for now we can simply look at how the Snapdragon 820 compares in our benchmarks.
Update: As we've had a few questions on the subject, I just want to clarify browser testing. Samsung's stock browser was not included with our Verizon-branded sample phone, nor is it possible to install it at this time. As a result we are unable to test the performance of Samsung's browser. The Verge reports that this is a Verizon decision and that all Verizon phones will be shipping like this; so for these phones Chrome is the de-facto stock browser.
Starting off with our web benchmarks, we can see that in the time since our initial testing of the Snapdragon 820 MDP there have been some major improvements to how well Chrome is optimized for Kryo. As a result we're seeing results that are almost comparable to Snapdragon Browser in Chrome.
Overall then the Galaxy S7 and its Snapdragon 820 SoC won't top the charts on web benchmarks - Apple still holds an edge here - however the Galaxy S7 puts up a solid fight. The one drawback here is that the Mate 8 and its Cortex A72 CPU seems to have the edge over the Galaxy S7.
In Basemark OS II the combination of a better GPU, better NAND, and better single thread CPU performance seems to be enough for the Galaxy S7 to approach the iPhone 6s Plus in overall performance. While the system benchmark shows that Kryo isn't quite going toe to toe with Twister, the Adreno 530 helps to narrow the gap in the graphics test.
In PCMark, we can see that the Galaxy S7 is mostly comparable to the Galaxy S6. However major improvements in areas like GPU performance help to give it an overall advantage relative to the Galaxy S6 in the photo editing test. Given that this is basically a test of API-level performance, it's likely that Samsung's frameworks and governor settings lead to mostly similar performance in these tests.
Overall, the Snapdragon 820 appears to provide a pretty healthy bump in performance over almost every SoC seen in 2015, although it's hard to declare a clear winner when comparing it to Apple's A9 or Huawei's Kirin 950. If you glanced at the battery life graphs and the performance graphs above it's pretty obvious that Qualcomm has made some enormous strides here. While not quite going from zero to hero, Qualcomm has come close, and that definitely deserves some credit.
NAND Performance
If you think about the memory hierarchy, while RAM and cache are important, at the end of the day the most important aspect is the base storage. Even if you have infinite RAM and cache, if your storage is sufficiently slow the user experience is going to be painful for at least the first time you have to load something.
In order to test this, we use our standard test of AndroBench with 4 KB and 256 KB reads and writes for random and sequential tests. I went ahead and did some digging around to figure out exactly what it is we’re testing in the Galaxy S7, and it turns out that while the Galaxy S7 storage solution is similar to what’s in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, it isn’t quite the same. The Galaxy S7 UFS storage identifies itself as the KLUBG4G1CE-B0B1, which looks to be in the same family and appears to have been released at pretty much the same time as the Galaxy S6 storage solution, but the model number isn’t quite the same.
Looking at the performance results, we can also see that the Galaxy S7 is pretty similar to the Galaxy S6 in storage performance at a high level. Interestingly enough despite using full disk encryption on the Galaxy S7, we don’t really see a noticeable degradation in performance relative to the Galaxy S6 which is good to see considering the number of Android devices that do have noticeable performance effects when enabling FDE.
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hansmuff - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
I have a question about that. Is Chrome supposed to be an equalizer between the platforms? From a practical standpoint, the browser that Samsung ships is in some ways better optimized so I use that instead. Am I really missing out by not running Chrome on my S6?lilmoe - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
You're not missing out at all, the stock browser is much better. I use it, and have it synced with my FireFox account (bookmarks and tabs).zeeBomb - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
I wanna see a test done on RBrowser or a Qualcomm optimized browser with the CAF Aurora files (does make your browsing up to 40% faster, you're welcolme)grayson_carr - Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - link
Chrome is very poorly optimized for Exynos processors, so you aren't missing out on your S6, but for devices with Qualcomm processors, Chrome typically runs pretty well.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
I'm wondering if the situation has changed any with Android 6. I'm assuming that all the test results for the S7 were with Marshmallow while for the S6 they are with Lollipop. I'm pointing this out because my Note 5 just got the Marshmallow update and after the update, Chrome has improved so much that I'm now using it as my default when I never did before.Might be interesting seeing a test that included s6 with Lollipop, S6 with Marshmallow and S7 to see how much of the difference is actually attributable to the OS update???
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Unfortunately Samsung's browser is not available on our Verizon-branded sample phone. The phone only ships with Chrome, and it is not possible to install Samsung's browser at this time.The Verge is reporting that this is a Verizon decision, and that all Verizon S7s are like this.
id4andrei - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
What an interesting turn of events. Wonder why would Verizon be irked by Samsung's browser. Any thoughts Ryan? Maybe default adblocking since Verizon is also a media company.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
At this point it's open to speculation. But I believe Verizon pulled the Samsung browser from the S6 as well, in which case this is nothing new.Ratman6161 - Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - link
I'm assuming my Verizon Note 5 would be the same as the Verizon S6? My note 5 has the browser that just says "Internet". Is that the one you are calling the Samsung Browser? Either way, Chrome is not the only browser on my phone. I got the 6.01 update last friday and still have both browsers avaiolable after the update.tipoo - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
To me it still feels like Kyro doesn't aim high enough, given A9 has been shipping for months, in volume, and we're likely closer to A10. Even if A10 is a "tick" with a modest 20% performance boost, the cycle of staying behind it continues.That's the benefit of large profit margins I guess, and since just about no one but Samsung was making Android handset profits, no one was probably ordering a huge die with high IPC. Kyro comes a long way, and I'm glad they're going 2+2 with higher IPC rather than 4+4, but I guess I would have just liked it to go further and actually leapfrog the A9.
Samsung does have their own custom core in development, wonder how that compares to Qualcomms Kyro.