The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Review: Exynos and Snapdragon at 960fps
by Andrei Frumusanu on March 26, 2018 10:00 AM ESTBattery Life - A Stark Contrast
We extensively covered the performance of the Snapdragon and Exynos Galaxy S9’s – what remains to be seen is how that performance affects battery life in our standard tests. Performance between the regular and larger Galaxy S9 doesn’t change, however battery life may differ based on the variant as the regular S9 sports a 3000mAh (11.55Wh) battery versus the 16% higher 3500mAh (13.47Wh) of the Galaxy S9+. Naturally the 14.2% bigger screen area of the S9+ offsets some of that advantage.
Unfortunately for this review we couldn’t get identical variants of the different SoC Galaxy S9s – our S9+ is a Snapdragon 845 unit while our S9 is an Exynos 9810 unit, so we weren’t able to execute a true apples-to-apples comparisons between the SoC variant, however as we’ll see the delta between the units is large enough that it won’t change the conclusion.
Our web browsing test tries to mimic real-world usage patterns of browsing websites. This includes iterating through a list of websites and scrolling through them. In this test, screen efficiency and battery size play a role, but also we balanced it so that it also sufficiently stresses the SoC (CPU, GPU and display pipeline) as well.
The Snapdragon 845 Galaxy S9+ posted excellent battery life in our test and lands only third to the iPhone 8 Plus and the Mate 9. Unfortunately we never tested the S8+ to see the generational difference, but it shouldn’t be too different from the S835 regular S8 at around the 10 hour mark.
The Exynos 9810 Galaxy S9 absolutely fell flat on its face in this test and posted the worst results among our tracking of the latest generation devices, lasting 3 hours less than the Exynos 8895 Galaxy S8. This was such a terrible run that I redid the test and still resulted in the same runtime.
I investigated the matter further to try to see if this was caused by the high energy usage of the M3 cores – and it seems it is. Enabling the “CPU limiter” (S9 PS result in the graphs) which is found in the battery optimisation options of Samsung’s firmware greatly throttles the M3 cores down to 1469 MHz, memory controller to half speed and also seemingly changes some scheduler settings to make them more conservative. This results in peak performance equal to the Exynos 8895- however the scheduler alterations also noticeably slow down UI responsiveness so it’s actually a worse experience. Nevertheless, backing off on performance results in regaining almost 3 hours.
This is such a terrible battery performance of the Exynos 9810 variant that it again puts even more clout into the new SoC. My theory as to why this happens is that not only do the higher frequency state require more energy per work done than competing SoCs – because this is a big CPU complex there’s also lots of leakage at play. The DVFS system being so slow might actually be bad for energy here as we might be seeing the opposite of race-to-sleep, walk-to-waste. The fact that Apple’s SoCs don’t have any issues with battery life in this test showcases that it’s not an inherent problem of having a high-power micro-architecture, but rather something specific to the Exynos 9810.
In PCMark the disadvantage of the Exynos 9810 S9 isn’t as pronounced as in the web test, however it’s again a regression to the Exynos 8895 S8 – all while not posting a meaningful performance advantage over its predecessor that might explain the lower battery life.
The Snapdragon 845 Galaxy S9+ fared relatively well, even though it’s not quite as good as other devices.
In my personal every-day usage I can’t saw that I noticed a massive disadvantage in battery life on the Galaxy S9, however my everyday usage is relatively light and I haven’t had enough time with the phone yet as a daily driver to make a final judgment. I did notice that the Exynos 9810 does shows signs of suffering in heavy tasks. Instances of Gmail syncing my inbox with a new account did once result in a warm phone while the Snapdragon 845 Galaxy S9 did not showcase this characteristic.
I can’t fault the Snapdragon S9+ in the time I had it, but again I haven’t had enough real time with it to really judge it subjectively. As far as AnandTech testing goes, the data speaks for itself and based on what I’ve seen I strongly do not recommend the Exynos variant of the Galaxy S9 in its current state, especially if you’re a regular user of heavy apps.
Over the coming weeks I’m planning to try to dive into the workings of the Exynos 9810 and post a follow-up article on whether it’s possible to improve both in terms of performance as well as battery life if one changes the way the SoC’s scheduler and DVFS works. In the eventuality that Samsung updates its firmware to resolve these large issues with the Exynos Galaxies, then we’ll revisit the matter as soon as possible.
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Icehawk - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
I don’t think they have an editor or have another one of the guys proofread - it’s always a bit harder to do your own editing/I don’t get the impression that they are the best writers per se. Some of it is the haste in which they have been posting articles recently half finished with multiple updates. I don’t think they have the funding or perhaps management, not sure what happened but AT definitely has been on a downward slide since Anand himself left. Still great in-depth articles and good tech though, I’m not being a hater just honest with my opinion. This is still my first or second stop on my daily tech reading.North01 - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
> It’s curious to see that both the Galaxy S9’s showcase what seems to be worse sustained performance even though efficiency should have gone up – it’s possible that Samsung decided to limit the S9 to lower sustainable TDPs for cooler devices or longer battery life. We’ll have to verify this theory in another Snapdragon 845 device in the future – the sustained GPU performance might be higher in that case.This is something I'm really curious about.
Robikonobi - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
What is the difference between auto vs pro auto? I understand that in pro auto you can choose the aperture f1.5 vs f2.4, but why would pro auto produce more acurate exposure as compared to regular auto (as shown in the purple power macro pictures)? In pro auto, the only variable is the difference in aperture, but yet both pro auto shots (in f1.5 and f2.4) produce more accurate exposure than the full auto mode. Any idea why?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
I'm not privy to Samsung's camera algorithms. It is the way it is because it so might be as well the best explanation.lilmoe - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
I found this out by chance, but I'm almost 100% positive that sensor image stacking multi-frame noise reduction are ONLY being utilized in full Auto, because those enhancements are only applied in jpegs. When you switch to pro mode, the app switches all that of because it assumes that RAWs are needed.You're getting a "different" exposure because you're only getting 1 unprocessed image, and a "secondary"/complementary jpeg for fast sharing.
robertkoa - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Did you try the Pro Mode and just move down minus .5 to .7 on FStop values ?axi6ne8us - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Since it has improved stereo speakers and headphone jack, does it include a 32bit DAC with amplifier?robertkoa - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
I have read that it does.And you get premium audio in BOTH versions of CPU.
Remember when you got the premium Wolfson Audio Chip only on Exynos Models previously ?
It's not Wolfson any more but supposedly up to 32bit 196K although not 100% sure- something I read .
Dolby Atmos is great though IMO.
It would be nice on the fantasy S10 Pro in addition to a 4000MAH battery to have a way to digitally input audio at full resolution ...like a Protools Mix etc.
lopri - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
What an incredible review. It was exhausting to read but in the end it was more than worth it. The degree of thoroughness and precision the review went for is simply hard to believe. The camera section in particular is particularly enlightening in more than one regards. The perfection the review aims for while comparing more than a dozen of phones is never before seen in a smartphone review, and the beautiful scenery the reviewer chose not only makes it easier for readers to compare the results themselves, but also gives a hint of the reviewer's taste, which, I think, adds to the persuasiveness of the reviewer's opinion. I found myself in agreement with the reviewer's assessments as I followed through one scenery at a time. (with the exception of Night Scenic 1, where I thought the S9 did better than the competition) I am also grateful the review did not waste anyone's time nor degraded itself with silly stuff like AR Emoji or make-up picker (?) that other reviewers are seemingly delighted to cover without self-awareness.Lavkesh - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
While the rest of the so called reviewers are going gaga over the geekbench scores of the Exynos, the real deal, as always, explained better on Anandtech. With such basic performance handicaps, I sometimes wonder whether Samsung should be spoken in, in such high regard in the Android space. Their software is poor, the only thing that they are good in, the hardware, turns out isnt as good as thought and yet no one seems to have problem with these kirf devices being priced almost on a similar level as the iPhone. As always Samdung does not know it any better.