Samsung Galaxy Note9 Performance & Battery Showdown: Snapdragon vs Exynos
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 26, 2018 8:00 AM ESTConclusion - More of the same
While we never reviewed the Note9, and this piece isn’t meant to be a full review, we can still put out a few sentences about the phone as a whole. Here Samsung is able to build a fantastic device, and there’s very little to criticize the Note9 on. The screen is large, bright, sharp and accurate. The camera is leading edge, even though by now there are devices out in the market which manage to compete quite well with Samsung’s best, especially in low light. Samsung makes no compromises in features, and the Note9 has everything: a 3.5mm headphone jack, wireless charging, IP68 rating, and naturally its key feature, the S-Pen.
While on the outside, the Note9 impresses in all aspects regardless where you purchase it from, on the inside things are again quite different as we again see the usage of two very contrasting SoCs.
I think the following picture sums things up quite well:
Like on the Galaxy S9, the Note9’s Exynos variant is just an overall inferior device. Battery life was one aspect that the Exynos S9s fared quite terribly in, and this time around Samsung did manage to somewhat improve the difference to the Snapdragon 845. Unfortunately it’s not enough as the Snapdragon variant still leads.
While the battery disadvantage has somewhat decreased, Samsung has done nothing to improve the performance of the chipset. Here the Snapdragon 845’s software is still leagues ahead of what the Exynos is able to offer, with the latter still not being able to differentiate itself much from the Exynos 8895 in system performance. The benchmark differences are very much also representative of the real-world performance difference of both variants.
In our recent quarterly smartphone guide, I’ve recommended the Snapdragon Note9 alongside the S9s as among the best Android devices you can buy this holiday. The Exynos Note9 in my opinion again doesn’t really make the cut as you’re paying flagship prices for a device that offers less battery life and performance not much better than last year’s phones.
Having finally gotten these results out, I hope to finally turn the page on the topic, as I’m feeling like a broken record and the coverage is akin keeping on beating a dead horse. The situation is eerily similar to the Galaxy S4 SoC situation from a few years back, only that I feel the differences this year were much worse. Huawei’s vertical integration here is pushing the company to make great strides with every generation, and Apple’s silicon is now so well ahead that we’re not really expecting Android vendors to catch up any time soon.
Samsung as a whole needs to decide where they want to go forward with this dual-sourcing strategy as I currently see it as a lose-lose situation for both the smartphone division as well as their chipset business. Hopefully the Exynos 9820 manages to be competitive chipset and S.LSI manages to finally get serious about execution as a SoC vendor, as otherwise the next few years are just going to a rough ride.
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cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
When note 9 was in preorder, all the reviews were the snapdragon 845 variant, draw the conclusions for yourself, but for me it's obvious what samsung did. :)Tams80 - Monday, December 3, 2018 - link
You might have a case with the consumer ombudsman.The UK also has class action lawsuits, but as it's still relatively new to the UK, it'll probably be even more troublesome.
Sjokoprins - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
If there's a new apple device then there would be a very thorough in depth review, as for a new samsung flagship: they do not mind it seems.And that is really apple biased.
The know very well at anandtech how to avoid exposure to samsung phones and how to generate a lot of attention to apple phones......
Meteor2 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
I would think the 20-minute limit on max GPU performance is because that’s the typical maximum length of time people play games on mobile phones for. The designers are letting temperatures reach battery-damaging levels to secure performance — but only briefly.jaju123 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
When you read this and realise you just ordered the 512gb Exynos Note 9. :OAre there custom kernels out there that somewhat mitigate these issues?
lmcd - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
The "issues" are bad custom CPU core designs out of Samsung. Kernels don't solve that.It's not "fall on its face" horrible, Samsung's cores still wipe the floor with A53s and A55s. Just not flagship level.
multicorn - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
There are no issues. I have the 128 GB Exynos Note 9. It's absolutely perfect. So, e.g. when I go to bed, I usually have 50% of battery left. Maybe with the QC model I would have 55%. Do I care? Nope. Same with performance. Everything works flawlessly. Maybe the QC model scores higher in benchmarks, so what? In real world usage you won't notice any difference. Would I notice the difference between the Exynos models DAC vs. the inferior DAC in the QC model? Maybe..Spunjji - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
As someone who's owned a few generations of Exynos Samsung devices, I'd warn you away from messing with custom kernels. They tend to be flaky, unreliably supported and more hassle to implement than they're worth in terms of performance. Try out the device, see if the performance suits you and buy accordingly. You won't get the full set of Note 9 features from anyone else so it should really be about what you want from the phone rather than its absolute performance (within acceptable boundaries).cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Not really, only one kernel and it's not that active in development. That part of the forums is so dead that I can't believe it... and this for the best phone samsung offers currently. Can understand the devs tho, why buy, keep and spend time on device with such a massive failure of a SOC. The phone is good in real world usage tho, I have one, but everyone who tested both exynos and sd variants said that the difference is a lot bigger than they was prepared to be and kept the sd. :)Quantumz0d - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Excellent piece Andrei, thanks.Especially the battery part and fuel gauge. Please kindly do mention the workings of them. Very much interested in this aspect especially how the iPhone does and their "manual throttle switch". I read your post on how Samsung caps the battery charging to keep more lifetime, on XDA, this confuses me about the battery longevity discrepancy that you mentioned. To add my OP3 fuel gauge chip also blocks installing the 3Ts higher spec battery (3000 vs 3300) and voltages, though a developer managed to get the reading of cycles from it (Sultanxda) and the mentioning of the GPU and thermals is really fantastic coverage, I believe the S.LSI and Samsung Mobile have bureaucracy issues like Intel and lost their direction, just like how LG is doing badly with marketing and their drastic change after Exec shakeup after failed Quarter results. Its unfortunate that they dropped their unique design with V40 and G7, even the marketing is bad and going mainstream like camera game on their site " 5 cameras". Your point is definitely valid with Huawei execution but that phone is against user control with EMUI and rollback bricks and BL unlock and total copypasta design.
I wanted to import a Note 9 but the ebay and price where I wanted to import are too expensive. And the LTE bands issues with carrier aggregation in US LTE Network. And the 9810 issues with perf and battery issues, though the Custom ROM scene is excellent with Exynos devices, Note 9.
I picked up a V30S instead for 500 bucks, US warranty and has fairly good battery life and underrated specs it has Qnovo Adaptive charging technology which saves the battery from over doing its cycles and reduce the fatigue. Maybe you can look at them, Sony also does this Qnovo technology.