The Snapdragon 855 Phone Roundup: Searching for the Best Implementations
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 5, 2019 8:30 AM ESTBattery Life
While not strictly related to the performance or the Snapdragon 855 chipset itself, it’s also interesting to see how the different devices end up in terms of their battery life. In this approach we can identify how efficient the non-SoC components of a device are.
The Galaxy S10+ continues to dominate here, most likely due to Samsung’s newer generation OLED panel that seemingly might be employing a newer and more efficient emitter generation compared to all other phones in the comparison. Another aspect of the Galaxy S10 that is different to the other devices in the comparison is that it’s using Broadcomm’s BCM4375 WiFi 6 (802.11ax) chipset rather than Qualcomm’s own WiFi 5 chipset for most of the rest of the devices.
Sony’s Xperia 1 suffers from its 4K panel screen and the fact the DDIC has to work a lot harder to drive it, whilst devices like the G8 and Mi9 suffer from either an inefficient screen or simply a smaller battery capacity. The OnePlus 7 Pro in 90Hz mode has to make a battery compromise, while the remaining the devices are doing quite well, but just aren’t as power optimised as the S10+.
PCMark shifts the results around a bit. In this case, the same factors as on the web test play a role, however the SoC power efficiency has a bigger impact here as the CPU is a lot more active. Devices as the OPPO Reno 10x take the lead because they’re also showcasing the worst performance in PCMark due to the more relaxed scheduler and DVFS setting.
Overall still, all Snapdragon 855 devices except for the Xperia 1 are doing well in this test.
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cha0z_ - Monday, September 9, 2019 - link
Actually the exynos is more EXPENSIVE! Note 9 when released costed 1100 euros in Europe vs 1000 dollars in US, you can check the conversion yourself as 1000 euros are over 1100 dollars. The fact you got a samsung device for cheaper is nothing exclusive to you nor China - there are super big discounts in US too for the qualcomm variants.s.yu - Monday, September 9, 2019 - link
Actually I look before I buy, the SK version is the cheapest anywhere, I had the option of buying the HK version(on SD) of the same tier for ~$100 more but I decided against it thinking it's not worth the premium.A friend in the US also bought a Note 8 at the time and went for an HK version because getting it from HK is still cheaper than in the US and he preferred SD. I don't know how there are significant discounts in the US but suspect they're bound by contracts.
As for the high price in Europe that should come as a surprise to no one. Most electronics are more expensive in Europe, it's not specific to Samsung.
1nterceptor - Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - link
I agree, would be really great if we could see exy9825 vs exy 9820 vs sd855+ vs sd855. Why exy9820 and sd855 you may ask, well because of the software updates, i wonder if and how much difference does it make now after 6 months on the market and couple of firmware updates...1nterceptor - Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - link
...although, i believe exy9825 is not by any means much faster/better than the "old" 9820, it is probbably more efficient on the other hand...jrocket - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Since many of these phones vary in price significantly, it would be interesting to see a "performance per dollar" value comparison.IUU - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
Would be if it was not so trivial. I mean , if one phone costs 400 dollars and another one 800, there you have straight away your performance per dollar. All are sd 855s , so there is nothing more to consider. One could argue about camera, screen, battery life, but these are irrelevant to performance.flyingpants265 - Tuesday, September 17, 2019 - link
It says right in the article that the performance differs depending on software implementation.Wardrive86 - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Excellent article as always! I would like to see which version of Android each phone has in the system performance tests to see if some of the older device performance data is up to date and also see which Opengl and Vulkan drivers each device has while testing was done...however even without that data still the best tech site there is. Thanks!Wardrive86 - Sunday, September 8, 2019 - link
For example:LG G7 Android 9 opengl driver : 331.0
Slingshot Extreme Unlimited OpenGL ES 3.1
Physics peak : 3486
Physics sustained : 3392
Graphics peak : 5467
Graphics sustained: 5326
(5 runs, 20 minutes, Room temp: 78F/25.6C)
Immediately followed by Work 2.0
Performance : 8146
Web : 6588
Video : 5701
Writing. : 9554
Photo : 15830
Data : 6314
yacoub35 - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Aside from battery life, the things I would care most about in a phone comparison are:Does it have stereo speakers?
Does it have a headphone jack?
Does it use vanilla Android (or how close to vanilla is what it uses)?
Does it get all of the Android updates and security patches in a timely fashion?
How is the camera performance (speed to load the app and take a photo, image stabilization, low light performance)?
How much RAM does it have?
How much internal storage (excluding the OS) and how much expandable, if any?