Samsung Galaxy S8 Showdown: Exynos 8895 vs. Snapdragon 835, Performance & Battery Life Tested
by Matt Humrick on July 28, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Galaxy
- Mobile
- SoCs
- Snapdragon 835
- Exynos 8895
- Galaxy S8
The Samsung Galaxy S8’s headline features are its edge-to-edge Infinity Display and striking new design. Of course it still comes packed with the latest hardware and technology like previous Galaxy phones, including iris recognition, wireless charging, and a flagship SoC. Actually, there are two different SoCs for the S8 and S8+. Most regions around the world will get Samsung's Exynos 8895, while regions that require a CDMA modem, such as the US and China, will get Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835. Both SoCs are built on Samsung's 10nm LPE process and are paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of UFS NAND.
While no market receives both types of phones through official channels, with the wonders of modern shipping, anyone with a bit of time and patience would have little trouble tracking down the out-of-region version of the phone. Consequently, for the nerdy among us, we simply have to ask: how do these dueling SoCs compare? Which SoC – and consequently which phone – is better?
Today we’ll delve into the performance differences between the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895 to help answer those questions. We'll also see how well they work with the Galaxy S8’s other hardware and software when we evaluate its system performance, gaming performance, and battery life.
| Samsung Galaxy S8 Series | ||
| Samsung Galaxy S8 | Samsung Galaxy S8+ | |
| SoC | Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 (US, China, Japan) 4x Kryo 280 Performance @ 2.36GHz 4x Kryo 280 Efficiency @ 1.90GHz Adreno 540 @ 670MHz Samsung Exynos 8895 (rest of world) 4x Exynos M2 @ 2.31GHz 4x Cortex-A53 @ 1.69GHz ARM Mali-G71 MP20 @ 546MHz |
|
| Display | 5.8-inch 2960x1440 (18.5:9) SAMOLED (curved edges) |
6.2-inch 2960x1440 (18.5:9) SAMOLED (curved edges) |
| Dimensions | 148.9 x 68.1 x 8.0 mm 155 grams |
159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm 173 grams |
| RAM | 4GB LPDDR4 (US) | |
| NAND | 64GB (UFS) + microSD |
|
| Battery | 3000 mAh (11.55 Wh) non-replaceable |
3500 mAh (13.48 Wh) non-replaceable |
| Front Camera | 8MP, f/1.7, Contrast AF | |
| Rear Camera | 12MP, 1.4µm pixels, f/1.7, dual-pixel PDAF, OIS, auto HDR, LED flash | |
| Modem | Snapdragon X16 LTE (Integrated) 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 16/13) Samsung LTE (Integrated) 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 16/13) |
|
| SIM Size | NanoSIM | |
| Wireless | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MU-MIMO, BT 5.0 LE, NFC, GPS/Glonass/Galileo/BDS | |
| Connectivity | USB Type-C, 3.5mm headset | |
| Features | fingerprint sensor, heart-rate sensor, iris scanner, face unlock, fast charging (Qualcomm QC 2.0 or Adaptive Fast Charging), wireless charging (WPC & PMA), IP68, Mobile HDR Premium | |
| Launch OS | Android 7.0 with TouchWiz | |
Our initial look at Snapdragon 835 revealed that its Kryo 280 performance cores are loosely based on ARM’s Cortex-A73 while the efficiency cores are loosely based on the Cortex-A53. Samsung's Exynos 8895 also has an octa-core big.LITTLE CPU configuration, but uses four of its own custom M2 cores paired with four A53 cores. Samsung introduced its first custom CPU core, the M1, last year. Compared to ARM’s A72, integer IPC was similar but the M1 trailed the A72 in efficiency. The M2 does not appear to be a radical redesign, but rather a tweaked M1 that offers the usual promises of improved performance and efficiency. Are the changes enough to top Qualcomm’s flagship SoC?
Battery life is one of the most important metrics for a smartphone. A bunch of cool features and lightning quick performance will do little to temper your frustration if the phone is dead by lunchtime. This was an issue for the Galaxy S6, which came with a small-capacity battery that contributed to its at-times disappointing battery life. Samsung increased their battery capacity for the S7 models, but there’s no further increase for the S8s. The smaller S8 retains the same 3000 mAh capacity as the S7, while the the S8+ drops 100 mAh compared to the S7 edge. Any improvement to battery life for this generation will need to come from more efficient hardware, and indeed at least for Qualcomm, this is precisely the angle they've been promoting to hardware developers and the public alike.
Previous Galaxy phones delivered good performance, but shortfalls in one or more performance metrics have kept them from being a class leader. Will the updates to the S8’s hardware and software finally smooth away these performance wrinkles? Will efficiency improve with the new 10nm SoCs? Did Samsung reduce power consumption in other areas? It’s time to take a closer look at the Galaxy S8.
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xfrgtr - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Delusional isheep detectedGuccizBud - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
World mobile market share below. All numbers are percentages except the last column ("ratio") — that column simply divides the "Android" column by the "Apple" column, indicating how many Android devices were sold for each Apple device sold. Sorry if the columns don't line up ᎓Year │Android Apple Other Ratio
─────────────────
2016 │ 86.2 12.9 0.9 6.7
2015 │ 82.8 13.9 3.3 6.0
2014 │ 84.8 11.6 3.6 7.3
2013 │ 79.8 12.9 7.3 6.2
2012 │ 69.3 16.6 14.1 4.2
Since the information is out there for anyone who cares to know the truth, it is incomprehensible to me that some people will stick their heads in the sand and say unbelievably ignorant things like "Apple are top of the heap at the moment", or ( my personal favorite ) "Apple destroying every other device for the past 5 years". Read that last one again. Then look at the actual data. Then read that again. Try to really get a feel for the extent of human delusion.
If someone says "I like Apple better", I have no problem with it. Even if they say "I think Apple is better in my opinion" I respect that, and what's more I'll respect it whether or not I agree with them. But when someone literally disregards reality, not only do Ihave no respect for then, I find them downright scary.
Saihtam - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Quality piece of article as always on AnandTech! I've waited a long time for this one :)hlovatt - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
How come so sparse on the Apple comparisons? Geekbench also runs on Apple and I thought you had SPEC running on Apple?Overall both processors seem disappointing, not particularly fast CPUs and the GPUs throttle and the battery life is only on a par with other phones.
melgross - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Yes, I keep wondering about that too. There are a lot more tests the iPhone can do than they tend to show. Is that a deliberate choice?It will be interesting to see what this year’s iPhone will do, as it’s just about 6 weeks out. The 7 is almost a year old now.
jordanclock - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Probably because this is, as the title indicates, mainly a comparison of Exynos and Snapdragon in essentially the same phone.solnyshok - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
on S7, I believe only Exynos model got custom ROMs. If you have Snapdragon, you are stuck with Samsung software. Probably same story with S8?joms_us - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Le Pro 3 (SD821) still humiliating top dogs. Keeping mine until they come up with a much faster quad core variant.UtilityMax - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
I personally don't give a damn about the edge screen and I don't like the aspect ratio of the S8 screen. The Nexus 5X feels like a perfect device for my hand, but I can see why S8 can be very popular. A whole lot of people (unlike me) have shorter fingers which can't reach the other side of screen in the one-handed operation. S8 works perfectly for them, and most of them don't care which SoC is inside the phone.1_rick - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
I know a lot of people like to be able to use the phone one-handed but my personal opinion is I've never cared at all about it. I like the bigger screens so I can see more of whatever.