Samsung Galaxy S8 Showdown: Exynos 8895 vs. Snapdragon 835, Performance & Battery Life Tested
by Matt Humrick on July 28, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Galaxy
- Mobile
- SoCs
- Snapdragon 835
- Exynos 8895
- Galaxy S8
Final Words
Any discussion about the Galaxy S8’s performance begins with its two SoCs, which have some things in common, but a lot more differentiating the two. At a low level, both are built on the same Samsung 10nm LPE process. But past that, what the chip designers at Qualcomm and Samsung LSI built with that process are at times very different.
In terms of processing elements, the Snapdragon 835 uses four semi-custom Cortex-A73 CPU cores for its big cluster, while the Exynos 8895 employs four of Samsung’s custom M2 cores. Our lower-level tests show almost no overall difference in integer IPC between the two CPU cores, with each microarchitecture showing a small advantage in a few, very specific workloads. The M2 in the E8895 delivers better overall floating-point IPC, but on the whole there is not a big difference in CPU performance between the S835 and E8895, thanks to their similar IPCs and clockspeeds.
Focusing solely on the hardware’s capabilities ignores a vital piece of the puzzle, however. Software plays an important role too, particularly the parameters that control a phone’s CPU scheduling and DVFS systems. OEMs fine tune these parameters to find the right balance between performance, power consumption, and thermal limits. It’s only when running system-level tests such as PCMark, which runs more realistic workloads that use standard Android API calls, where these effects become evident and where we see a noticeable difference in performance between the two S8 models. The S835 S8 performs almost 30% better than the E8895 model overall in PCMark, with a 49% advantage in the Writing test where thread migration between the little and big clusters plays a prominent role. The storage performance of our E8895 S8 sample, which came with Samsung UFS 2.1 NAND, was significantly better than our S835 S8’s Toshiba UFS 2.0 NAND, however.
When it comes to running apps, the E8895 S8’s performance is comparable to last year’s flagships, while the S835 S8 is among the fastest currently available. There’s another aspect of performance, though, that’s more difficult to measure: user interface responsiveness and fluidity. This is an area where Galaxy phones have struggled in the past. I only had access to the E8895 S8 for a brief period (all of which was used for testing and collecting data), and I did not have the S835 model at the same time for a side-by-side comparison, so I’ll reserve my subjective opinion about UI performance to the S835 model. Overall I found it to be very fluid. Not quite as smooth as Google’s Pixel, but noticeably better than the Galaxy S7 (S820), which never felt as fast as some of its peers. The S835 S8’s performance perfectly mirrors the smooth and fluid design of its chassis.
Both models deliver excellent graphics performance, although the E8895 model and its 20-core Mali-G71 GPU is a little faster in most workloads. The flipside is that the S835 model’s Adreno 540 offers much better efficiency, prolonging battery life by an extra hour in our GFXBench Manhattan ES 3.1 battery test.
Peak performance is good for bragging rights, but what really matters when playing the most demanding games is sustained performance. Interestingly, both S8 models deliver the same steady-state performance after throttling GPU frequency to stay within their thermal limits. While neither SoC can maintain peak frequency for very long, sustained performance is still excellent, which is important if you want to use the S8 with Samsung's Gear VR system.
Battery life has also improved significantly from the S7 to the S8, even though there’s been no change in battery capacity. This comes thanks in large part to Samsung's 10nm LPE process, which has allowed chip designers to rebalance their designs to curtail power consumption while still offering a modest performance increase. Overall Samsung has definitely improved overall efficiency for this generation, however the S835 model has a clear advantage over the E8895 S8. This is particularly obvious when looking at GPU power consumption.
If you’re upgrading from a previous Android or Galaxy phone, especially one that predates the S7, the Galaxy S8’s performance and battery life will not disappoint, no matter which SoC is used. Between these two, however, across all of the tests I've run, the S835 model is certainly the better of the two in terms of those metrics.
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Nullify - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
Stupid video. Opening Apps means nothing.The better one is where they test loading large photos and applying effects in real time or rendering 4K video. iPhone 7 absolutely DESTROYS the OnePlus 5. And it's a year old phone on an older process while the 8895/835 are on 10nm.
Even funnier is watching you cry over on Ars when the iPhone 7 spanked every other phone in these App opening videos and you claimed the tests were flawed. Now that the OnePlus 5 opens Apps faster (marginally) suddenly these types of tests are valid? Hypocrite much?
Please stick around Anand. There are a lot of intelligent posters here who have a very good understanding of processor design (including the excellent staff here). I can't wait to hear the responses to your comments.
bigboxes - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
You fanboys are really something. Gotta protect your favorite company from the naysayers at all cost!Galid - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
I don't think you get it peeps, benchmarks here are sustained, opening apps is only using a small % of potential. When the apps/os starts to ask more, most of the android phones have the same problem, underclocking. Yep, it's easy to make a blazing fast processor but it's another feat to make it survive 100% load without underclocking.You might be able to put an 8 cylinder engine into a honda civic and use it to drive around town but push it a little bit too much and the car will suffer heavily. The frame won't support the torque.
Irish_adam - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
First of all your beloved iphone will also drop its clock rates after a couple of minutes because they are all passively cooled and cant sustain high clocks. Second of all i cant believe people still look at these benchmarks and think that its the hardware thats making the difference. We will probably never know who has the best processor because unless you can still android on an iphone or ios on an android phone we will never be able to determine how much an affect the related drivers and software are having on the scores. Its like running a benchmark on a mac vs a windows PC, you could have identical hardware but that doesnt mean the scores will be the same or even close.Irish_adam - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
*installakdj - Monday, July 31, 2017 - link
It’s fairly simple to play the same game on the different hardware, compare from there. Plenty of parity in apps as well ...plenty that 'tax' the SoC and will throttle faster in poorly designed hardware.nikon133 - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
I'm a bit surprised that so many are still so focused on raw power. Smart phones have matured so nicely that many of these performance differences are really becoming pointless for majority of users.My colleague - arguably power user - still drives Galaxy S6 and runs everything he requires in very agreeable manner, including Kodi media center with handful of add-ons. I expect he will shift to S8 this year, since his phone is around 2 years old... but that's really just because he can, not because he needs to.
On the other hand, my other colleague has recently purchased new VW Tiguan, and after having fair share of problems between iPhone 7 and cars' infotainment, he has decided to move to S8. He is long term iPhone user - from iPhone 4, if memory serves - and one of company's executives, so cost is not an issue, and he has been replacing his iPhones annually. Definitely not biased towards Android, but currently very happy user of one - according to him, Android Auto is just so much better and more reliable than Apple CarPlay, in his experience (limited to Tiguan). I don't know all the details about his experience with either, but gentleman is one of our company's leading IT specialists and I would expect that problems he was experiencing with iPhone were not typical end-user nonsense.
Which leads me to my conclusion - ultimate performance is nice to have, but only if phone doesn't sacrifice functionality. I was iPhone user, before I have switched to Windows Phone (nd still am using Lumia 950 XL as my personal phone)... but judging from experience with my work-issued Nexus 5X, Android is maturing really nicely. Even with aging hardware such as 5X is (Snap 808), phone is still smooth as with my work needs, and really reliable. First time ever I'm starting to think that my next personal phone will be Android.
tamalero - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
It just shows that certain tests are heavily optimized in IOS.Because if you see the rest of the benchmarks.. the Galaxy S8 pretty much is above the iphones in most tests.
Galid - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
They are not optimized, the iPhones doesn't underclock while in sustained benchmarks, every android phones do underclock.Nshaikh - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
Sorry Dude but thats not true enough to fool people around, well the reality is that since laat year iOS device as in Appla has faced a problem of Sales in India besides Android is always a life saver and speaking about Samsung well in Reality my S6 Edge is way better than any of your iOS devices even the latest one does have the same clearity but lacks in switching back and even u can't shut apps off or can't install any pirate softwares without jail break means to say rooting an Android Device and making it a PC is possible but even after Jail-Break u can't make an Apple device turn into Android but an Adroid can be coverted to any platform...The Android powered device carries Hardware that ate Super cool to Competite the Apple iOS device.