The Samsung Galaxy S10+ Snapdragon & Exynos Review: Almost Perfect, Yet So Flawed
by Andrei Frumusanu on March 29, 2019 9:00 AM ESTBattery Life: Impressive
Battery performance of the Galaxy S10+ has been touted to be as class-leading. The introduction of a larger battery, more efficient screen as well as a new generation of SoCs are sure to bring improvements over last year’s Galaxy S9. One aspect that readers will have waited for impatiently is our testing of the new Exynos 9820 variant against the Snapdragon 855, which has also been one topic I’ve been extremely interested to see.
We run Samsung's Galaxy devices at the full potential they can deliver, something we've done for several generations now. This means that the screen resolution is set to the native 1440p of the display panels, and the new battery settings on the S10 were also set to "Performance" mode.
Without further ado, let’s get do the results:
In our web browsing test, both Galaxy S10+s are showcasing outstanding longevity at 13.08h for the Exynos and 12.75h for the Snapdragon variant. Least to say, I was extremely surprised to see this result even though we measured the Exynos 9820 CPU to be quite less efficient than the Snapdragon 855 in peak performance efficiency. I would have not expected the Exynos to match the Snapdragon, much less slightly beat it.
Before going into more details, let’s see the PCMark battery test results:
Here, in absolute terms, the Galaxy S10+ aren’t quite as impressive as on the web test and further lag behind the excellent results of the Kirin 980 devices. Nevertheless, these are some impressive figures and again it’s very good to see that both units are almost evenly matched, this time the Snapdragon unit lasting slightly longer than the Exynos.
To explain these results, we have to keep one thing in mind: the Exynos unit will have posted worse performance than the Snapdragon, so it will have spent more time at the lower more efficient frequency states.
One thing that I also noticed, is that in very low idle loads where there’s just some light activity on the A55 cores, the Exynos 9820 variant actually uses less power than the Snapdragon unit. The figures we’re talking about here are 20-30mW, but could possibly grow to bigger values at slightly more moderate loads. It’s possible that Qualcomm has more static leakage to deal with on the 7nm process than Samsung on 8nm, one thing that I’ve come to hear about the TSMC 7nm node.
Furthermore, one of the biggest improvements for the Galaxy S10 over past devices isn’t actually the SoC nor the actual bigger battery. It’s actually the display as well as the base power consumption of the phone. In Airplane mode, the base power has gone down by almost 100mW compared to the Galaxy S9+ which is a fantastic development and is especially something that will result in higher low-brightness battery life.
Currently in my time with both S10+ units, I can say they’ve been among the longest lasting Android devices I’ve tested.
Exynos vs Snapdragon in identical usage patterns & Prolonged idle periods
One issue I can confirm with the Exynos unit is that after a voice call in any app, the phone isn’t correctly entering its lower power state, and will suffer from increased idle battery drain until a reboot. This is something that hopefully Samsung addresses in a firmware update as it doesn’t look to be a hardware related issue. When not affected by this bug, both phones idle very similar to each other and slightly better than the S9+ I use as my daily device.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
229 Comments
View All Comments
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
We don't have any good methodology on things like signal, network (does any site test this *accurately*?).As for the UI bits, it's something I wanted to have in the piece but also didn't want to further delay the article another week. In general OneUI is Samsung's by far best user interface and has fantastic features without them feeling like gimmicks. It's currently in my opinion the best variant of Android, though I'm sure some Google users will get angry at me for saying that.
GreenMeters - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
"If you’re a reader in the US or other Snapdragon markets, you can stop reading here and feel happy about your purchase or go ahead and buy the Galaxy S10+."Unfortunately, no, you can't feel happy about it, because once again the Snapdragon variant has its bootloader locked. So your expensive purchase that could easily have a 5+ year lifespan with an open source OS providing up-to-date security and features is now artificially limited to 2 years of Samsung's lousy support.
XelaChang - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Quite disappointing for Exinos, especially the audio. Going to look into Huawei P30 instead.Quantumz0d - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Hello Andrei, huge thanks for the solid piece. I don't think there are any editors out who does this type of analysis. The most superb part was the battery analysis, just fantastic. I remember your piece on the Note 9 as well.Because smartphones with soldered/sealed batteries are a pain with 2 Yr EOL of cycles due to aggressive current/power/volts/cycles. I wish when you cover the LG. Maybe kindly have a look at their Qnovo. Replacing at end user is so bad, ruins the IP rating and hard to source. Samsung improvising this is a really good news.
Next the Camera Hole points all are valid. Its worse than a notch with that absurdly thicc status bar and the stupid icons on the right side. An eye sore with dead pixels. Samsung showed in China for an under screen camera perhaps the Vertical integration you mentioned due to the Exynos applies here as well, perhaps the cost as well..
One UI though perhaps feels polished but its too childish/kid friendly to me and excessively rounded like iOS instead of stock Pie/Q, that is bad IMO.
Still have to read up on the Camera/Display. Also I think you should mention one great advantage that Exynos has - Bootloader Unlock. Without that QSD version is just a paperweight, zero ownership, zero tuning. IMO a brick.
Also good to hear about the speaker system performance, apple mentions it always its surprising how they didn't yet offered a good quality, finally those AKG buds are very very bad. I heard them, their tiny driver is horrible in low end and mid range, its shameful. I'm not up to date with recent audio progress but at $100 we can get RHA MA 750/ Final Audio / iBasso IT01/ TFZ King II / Mee Audio P1 / FiiO F9 and Pro / Dunu Titan1 and ton of IEMs with far more superior quality.
I hope they get the damn AKM chips into their phones and compete with LG ESS and take the Audio seriously, its a shame that LG doesn't advertise ESS anymore but Meridian collaboration.
Finally the Audio DAC part, sometimes being 100% accurate doesnt necessarily mean best, my iPod 5.5G Wolfson DAC before CL merger many people say the iPod 6G+ Classics are better due to the ball roll off they mention on the Wolfson 5.5G DAC, I have both of them running same OS (Aftermarket stable Linux based Rockbox) and the Cirrus Logic G classic sounds fatiguing to me, metallic and lack of thump vs the 5.5G. I think maybe your impression is also similar. I heard the 835s Acoustic in my Car with my friend's Note 8 US version and it was hollow and lack of any texture and rumble. The iPod beats it by a HUGE margin both of th 6G and 5.5G and 5.5G being better, the V30s ESS sounds more balanced vs the 5.5G as in clear at the expense of soundstage (in car more significant) and sharpness being higher but retains excellent sub bass. All this is subjective. Just to let you know..
Thanks.
Quantumz0d - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Correction.> Apple mentions it always its surprising how they didn't yet.
Apple stands at top as one of the best speakers on an iPad/iPhone.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
The iPhone XS improved it, but the S10 beats it handily in speaker quality.Quantumz0d - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
Wow, that's really surprising and great news. Thank you for the information. I'll stop by to a Best buy near to me and check it out.Perhaps they'll improve on their new S5 855 Tablet (hopefully with jack, unlike S5e) because the Tab S4 is outright beaten to pulp by iPad Pro 2017.
s.yu - Friday, April 5, 2019 - link
Wow beating Apple at audio is definitely something special.Quantumz0d - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
Damn another typo>Ball roll off
Its Bass Roll off. And 6G missing before "classic sounds"
watersb - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link
What an incredible opportunity to compare two leading SoC architectures.