The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Review: Exynos and Snapdragon at 960fps
by Andrei Frumusanu on March 26, 2018 10:00 AM ESTConclusion & End Remarks
The conclusion for the Galaxy S9 is always the toughest part to write as it’s where we have to reconcile all the pros and cons of the device and making a verdict on its value as a product to customers.
In terms of design, the S9 iterates on the S8 and I think that’s definitely a positive until Samsung somehow produces a better design overhaul. The changes we find here aren’t exactly ground-breaking and most people will get used to them very fast. The fingerprint scanner location is among the biggest ergonomics changes and while for me personally it didn’t do much, there’s plenty of people who find it an improvement.
The speaker sound quality of the Galaxy S9 is a massive improvement and this is now by far the best sounding smartphone device. The stereo speakers as well as the audio processing tuning along with the improved main speaker design all just provide a much better experience. I may not have covered this in the introduction, but Samsung’s choice to retain the 3.5mm jack is absolutely the right thing to do. I’ve got very strong feelings about companies’ rationales behind removing the headphone jack and find their reasoning either misguided or outright misleading, and just very anti-consumer choice. Here’s to hoping that Samsung sticks with it in the future, and as absurd as this is that I have to praise them for it, I have to do it to ensure that companies listen.
The screen of the Galaxy S9 holds very little surprises as it has only marginal improvements over the S8. It’s still among one of the best screens on smartphones, and honestly there’s not much more to say.
The camera of the Galaxy S9 for me had some high points and some low points. The high points are that the variable aperture of the S9 has real benefits and direct advantages in picture quality in day-light shots. The S9’s reduced usage of sharpening provided the cleanest pictures among all smartphones and thanks to its improved sensor its effective spatial resolution is actually higher than some higher resolution camera devices. The low-light shots also come with a quality improvement over the S8 – although it will depend on the lightning and scene to notice them at their full effect. Right now the S9 has the best low-light camera.
While the hardware of the S9’s camera definitely deserves praise, the software has notable issues in daylight shots. The Galaxy S9 has a very bad tendency to overexpose and compress the image’s dynamic range. In Pro mode these issues largely go away, but for the Galaxy S9 to offer a better point-and-shoot experience than the S8 or the new iPhones, Samsung needs to rework its camera calibration in Auto mode as right now it can be the odd one out in terms of results.
Finally, the biggest story for the Galaxy S9 is its big contrast in terms of SoC hardware. Ever since we first heard about the Exynos 9810 we had very large expectations and we knew there would be some tangible differences between Exynos and Snapdragon variants. The expectations couldn’t be more shattered than the results we got. While the Snapdragon 845 variant of the Galaxy S9 performed largely as advertised and as we had been told to expect by Qualcomm, the Exynos 9810 failed to live up to its hype in real-world scenarios. Effectively, the Exynos 9810 variant and as evidenced by all the data we collected, is the slower variant of the two. The root cause here has been identified as the extremely conservative scheduler and DVFS mechanisms which essentially nullify any advantage the new M3 cores have in synthetic benchmarks.
In 3D benchmarks, the Exynos 9810 posted very healthy efficiency improvements and even sometimes managed to catch up to last year’s Adreno 540 – something I hadn’t expected. Qualcomm’s new Adreno 630 raises the bar in terms of peak performance, however the promises of increased efficiency have not materialised in the commercial hardware as the performance boost comes at a cost of increased power. Effectively, when looking at sustained workloads, the Snapdragon 845 isn’t any faster than the Snapdragon 835 in its GPU department. Fortunately for Qualcomm, they’re still in the lead and this is not a deal-breaker for the Galaxy S9.
While the performance advantage of the Snapdragon 845 variant over the Exynos 9810 variant is something we could live with, the battery life results of the Exynos is definitely a deal-breaker. I’m not sure of the root cause here and whether it’s something that can be fixed by software, but showcasing such a battery runtime regression over its predecessor is universally something that we can all agree on as not acceptable for a flagship device. Based on our testing, it’s especially in heavy use-cases where this will most evident. The Snapdragon 845 variant performed as expected in the battery life tests.
Finally the recommendation of the Galaxy S9 will be based on which market you are in and which variant you’ll be able to purchase. The Snapdragon 845 variant in the US, China and Japan is a healthy upgrade over its predecessors and I don’t really have much to say against it as a phone, besides the camera exposure issues. Here Samsung iterated and perfected over the S8, and whether the S9 is worth to you as an upgrade is something you’ll need to decide based on its individual parts, because as a package, the Snapdragon S9s don’t disappoint.
For readers in markets with the Exynos variant I need to take a slightly different tone. Make no mistake as I say that the Exynos S9 is by far not a bad phone. If you come from older generation devices you will see significant upgrades, but as a flagship coming at a price premium we expect a no-compromise device, and here is where the Exynos S9 doesn’t tick all boxes. The battery life regression that we measured is the single most concerning aspect of the device. Here buyers will need to consider the device with caution and well-thought out consideration and should maybe apply a wait & see approach over the coming months – for one to see if Samsung resolves the issues via software, and secondly, to await the release of competitor’s new product lines for possible better alternatives.
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id4andrei - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
All reviewers go gaga for geekbench scores with iphones/ipads as well. In this case the GB scores prove that at least in chip design Samsung has made a huge leap. As the review has outlined, the problem lies with the scheduler and DVFS which Samsung can and should address.If "Samdung" is so bad at hardware design, how do you call Apple's high priced iphones of the last 3 years that could not sustain chip performance and had to be throttled so as to not crap out. All initial reviews were glowing but they were all impervious to the impeding throttling.
name99 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Dude, you really do yourself no favors by struggling so hard to criticize Apple.Apple's throttling has NOTHING to do with the CPU per se (ie the CPU is not generating excessive heat beyond spec, or because it has been running too fast for too long), it has to do with the BATTERY and with a concern that, if CPU performance were to spike the battery could not supply enough current.
Very different problem, nothing to do with the CPU design. A real problem yes but totally irrelevant to the issues being discussed here.
Matt Humrick - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
Apple's big CPU and GPU are susceptible to thermal throttling when running sustained workloads too.Also, having to throttle a processor within a year of sale because its transient current requirements overwhelm the power delivery system is most definitely a design flaw.
Icehawk - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
My wife’s 6S is still working at 100% after several years, I get the feeling the amount of people affected is overblown as pretty much anything anti-Apple is. I do think Apple needs to look at a better way of dealing with this but it’s also not the armeggedon somemake it out to be. I am far from a Apple fanboy but I do like their iOS products but I am sure someone will make a retort of that nature. I’d say the same thing about the Samsung chip - not great but it is performant, perhaps if we stop thinking each year a new phone should blow us away it would help us be more realistic.Lavkesh - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
"In this case the GB scores prove that at least in chip design Samsung has made a huge leap" - Please explain huge leap here? The new chip barely outperforms the older SOC.ZolaIII - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
I am very disappointed with both SoC's. Qualcomm wasted so much space on bad L4 cache which only added to latency & generally wasted more. The 30% is enormous even if new A75 cores are 35% bigger (would be 50% with ARM's L2 reference cache size) I don't know about A630 vs A540 size but if it grown-up let's say 10% the cores & GPU would together accommodate for around 15~20% leaving L3 & L4 responsible for the rest. Would be much better they used it for GPU as it could had been 2x the size then. I am also very disappointed with new cache hierarchy as it turns out to be stupid and a waist of silicone. Seams to me neither SoC used good scheduler nor scheduling by the looks of things it seems Samsung used the CAF HPM sched settings for Snapdragon SoC very aggressive patched interactive without any restraints whatsoever & no hotplug whatsoever which is very south from optimal, reference QC platform seams to had at least used hotplug (as their is no other way to explain the difference of almost 1W in GPU testing as two vs four A75's active). On the other hand seems Samsung used Power aware schaduler instead HPM & very granulated hotplug producing very bad results as those are directly confronted two things & when splashed together can only result in catastrophic result. I prefer HPM configured to be used with limited task packing and a high priority tasks enabled with significant increase of time interval for it (so that it can skip CPU sched limit), for CPU sched interactive traditional not patched with tree step load limitations (idle so that it doesn't jump erratic on any back shade task, ideal that is considered as best sustainable leakage for given lithography & max sustainable for two core's [only on big cores] i also use boost enabled & set to ideal frequency one [same as in interactive]). Preferred to use core_ctl hotplug disabled for the two little & two big cores so that they never get switched off from it. I won't go further in details about it hire as its pointless. I find this idea balanced between always available/needed/total performance as most of the times two of each course are enough for most of tasks & if not it's not a biggie to wait for other two to kick in. There is a minor drow back in responsiveness on lite task's but actually it works as fast as possible on hard one's flagged as heavy tasks like for instance Chrome rendering. It's also very beneficial to GPU workloads where even switching of two little core's and giving even 100~150mv headroom to GPU means much.Sorry for getting a bit deep regarding how complete scheduling mechanism should be done but I had an urge to explain how it should be done as it's so terrible done in the both cases examined hire.
tuxRoller - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
It's not at all clear that the hpm is meaningfully better (much faster or much more power efficient) than a proper schedtune + energy model implementation.Scheduling is just ridiculously hard. Adding the constraints of: soft-realtime requirements, minimal battery usage, AND an asmp and you've got the current situation where there's not yet a consensus design. We are, however, starting to see signs of convergence, imho.
zeeBomb - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
I came...and I finally sawphoenix_rizzen - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Ouch. The Exynos S9 is just barely better than the Exynos S7. :( And that's what Canada's going to get.Here's hoping they can improve things via software updates. Was considering the S9 to replace the wife's now dead S6. She's been using my S7 for the past two months while I limp along with a cracked-screen Note4. Other than the camera and screen, this isn't looking like much or an upgrade for being two generations newer.
Maybe we'll give the ZTE, Huawei, and Xiaomi phones another look ...
mlauzon76 - Monday, March 26, 2018 - link
Samsung Exynos 9810 (Europe & Rest of World)Canada is the 'rest of [the] world', but we don't get that version, we never get anything with the Exynos processor, we get the following one:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (US, China, Japan)