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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Actually for us the phone costs more. Euro is higher than the US $ + they also add atleast 100 on top of the us price. It's 1100 euro (1240$) vs 1000$. :)vivekvs1992 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Obvious question.. Why is note 8 not on any of the charts?? I'd be more interested in comparing note 8 rather than lg g6..B3an - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
The Exynos 9810 is such a massive flop.I had to buy an import in order to get a SD845 version of my S9+. Hope Samsung fix future Exynos SoCs, because the gap in performance and battery life is just ridiculous and not acceptable. Infact Exynos 9810 isn't even acceptable for a high-end device.
wintermute000 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Can't argue with the numbers, however, anecdotally, my exy S9+ feels plenty fast with decent battery. I haven't heard anyone who doesn't haunt XDA etc. actually complain about exy, even techies. So I can only imagine that the SD845 version is even better as a phone LOLcha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
People don't get to hold the both variants to see the difference. Everyone who did and mind you - coming prepared for a difference into it - said that he is surprised how big it is and kept the SD variant.LiverpoolFC5903 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Some of these results for the Exynos look very dodgy, including one subtest where the 3 year old Snapdragon 820 scores higher. I wonder how accurate or representative these PC mark tests are, because that is all that the author has used to trash the Exynos 9810. Other tests/suites need to be run to validate these results. I am finding it hard to believe that an SOC with 'fat' cores will lag behind last years SOCs in many tests.GreenReaper - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
It's absolutely possible. Consider the current state of AMD graphics vs. NVIDIA - Vega doesn't really compete with the 1080, let alone the 2080. Then add in the fact that in mobile, inefficiency counts double, sinceit both drains the battery and causes thermals to spike; throttling that 'fat' CPU.tuxRoller - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
The author used other tests for graphics and threw in a few js benchmarks.I also think that others have responded about why having "fat cores" doesn't automatically mean better perf. Briefly,
unless your data set is tiny, you have to make sure that stalls happen as infrequently and briefly as possible. This requires a very well executed cache, a smart memory controller, and software that is well aware of how best to make use of it all.
There's more detail in the earlier articles about the issues with the 9810.
s.yu - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Thanks for another fun article!This would provide guidance for buying to more people if released earlier in the product cycle though :)
AceMcLoud - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Happy to see my iPhone 6s still holding up to 2018 Android "flagships".