Benchmarks Show Galaxy S8 With Snapdragon 835 Is a Much Faster Android Handset (hothardware.com)

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Benchmarks Show Galaxy S8 With Snapdragon 835 Is a Much Faster Android Handset (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @12:05PM from the speed-racer dept.

MojoKid writes: Samsung recently launched the Galaxy S8 series of Android smartphones to much fanfare but only recently did the handsets begin to arrive in market for testing and review. Though the high-polish styling of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ may or may not appeal to you, few would argue with its claims of significant performance gains and improved battery life. As it turns out, in deep-dive testing and benchmarking, the Galaxy S8 series is significantly faster than any other Android handset on the market currently, especially when it comes to graphics and gaming workloads. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor on board the GS8 is currently a Samsung exclusive, though it's expected to arrive in other handsets later this year. The Adreno 540 graphics engine on board the new Snapdragon chip is roughly 25% faster than the previous generation 820/821 series, though the chip is only about 10 percent faster in standard CPU-intensive tasks. Regardless, these are appreciable gains, especially in light of the fact that the new Galaxy S8 also has much better battery life than the previous generation Galaxy S7 series. The Samsung Galaxy S8 (5.8-inch) and Galaxy S8+ (6.2-inch) are expected to arrive at retail this week and though pricing is carrier-dependent, list for roughly $720 and $850 respectively, off contract.

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So a newer processor is faster? by EzInKy · 2017-04-18 12:14 · Score: 2

That is been the case all of my life.

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Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
1. Re:So a newer processor is faster? by EzInKy · 2017-04-18 13:47 · Score: 1
  
  I'm still using my 8 year old Nokia N900. I might not get mms messages but from what I've seen I'm not missing anything else.
  
  --
  Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
2. Re:So a newer processor is faster? by EzInKy · 2017-04-19 07:43 · Score: 1
  
  I tried fmms and found it pretty flaky. Yes, I treat my USB very gingerly and worry all the time that it will finally give up the ghost.
  
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  Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
3. Re:So a newer processor is faster? by Greyfox · 2017-04-19 11:59 · Score: 1
  
  Sit on my lap, sonny, while I tell you the story of the 386SX, a new processor with a disabled math coprocessor that was actually slower than an older 386 at the same clock speed...
  
  --
  I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
4. Re:So a newer processor is faster? by Hank+the+Lion · 2017-04-22 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  As far as I can recall, neither the 386 nor the 386SX had a mathematical coprocessor built-in.
  The 386 had a full external 32-bit databus, the 386SX was 32 bits internally, with only 16 bits externally, so you only needed 2 8-bits-wide SIMMs instead of 4. The coprocessor was always external, 387 vs 387SX.
  With the advent of the 486, the 486DX had the coprocessor built-in, which the 486SX didn't have. Both had an external 32-bit bus.
  There was a mathematical coprocessor for the 486SX, the 487SX, which actually included a full 486DX, but tested for (and disabled!) the 486SX on the mainboard.
Old by youngone · 2017-04-18 12:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

The summary reads a lot like the PC magazines I used to read 20 years ago, where any tiny increase in performance was worthwhile.
Thank goodness we're at the stage where any x64 processor from the last few years will be plenty good enough for most people, and benchmarks are largely meaningless
I am looking forward to the day when it's the same with phones.
1. Re:Old by rtb61 · 2017-04-18 12:50 · Score: 2
  
  The only one I bother with now, is does it come with a user removable battery. Trying to switch off a ringing smart phone is really annoying and seems to take forever. Ripping off the back and flicking out the battery is so much more satisfying and affirmative. Problem with data adding all sorts of things into a smart phone, it doesn't know when to STFU, switch off one thing, another kicks in, sometimes the fucking thing just refuse to switch off, you hold down that button and nothing, well, actually a whole bunch of annoying things continue to happen. Rip, flick is so much more guaranteed and just so satisfying (also it goes straight back to normal state without reconfiguring and enabling and switch it off and switch it back on seems to be the most effective way to manage buggy software, https://www.google.com.au/sear... 3000 results and in quotes so a real problem).
  
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  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
2. Re: Old by Type44Q · 2017-04-18 12:56 · Score: 1
  
  Ripping off the back and flicking out the battery is so much more satisfying and affirmative.
  I throw my S5 hard enough for the battery to fly out but not so hard that I break it... not so far at any rate. :)
3. Re:Old by Snotnose · 2017-04-18 12:57 · Score: 1
  
  My feeling is the GPU improvements mean more than CPU improvements nowdays.
  
  Then again, if the game AI needs to run on a GPU, and the graphics needs to run on a GPU, um, well, dang.
  
  I predict in 2 years we'll be buying AI cards in addition to our GPUs. If you're a gamer that is.
4. Re:Old by swillden · 2017-04-18 12:58 · Score: 1
  
  I find "slide down from top", "tap do not disturb" to be a much nicer way to silence a phone. I can still use it for other stuff while it's silenced and unsilencing it is the same "flick/tap", and there's no need to wait for it to boot.
  Most of the time I don't even have to do that much, though. The phone is set to silence itself automatically during any meeting on my calendar.
  
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5. Re:Old by Namarrgon · 2017-04-18 13:35 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I recall a PC magazine article from 1981 questioning the value of these new 16 bit microprocessors - what did we need them for? WordStar and Visicalc ran perfectly well on a Z-80 with CP/M, so surely additional speed was pointless for most people.
  
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  Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
6. Re:Old by CrashNBrn · 2017-04-18 13:57 · Score: 1
  
  There appears to be quite a few Motorola phones (all 5 that I've seen since 2012) in the G and X-series that aren't considered to have "user replaceable batteries", yet all you have to do is pry the back panel off with your thumbnail, and maybe remove a battery cover.
7. Re:Old by Anonymous Coward · 2017-04-18 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  I'm looking forward to something....like a PC of phones.
  Open standards, floss friendly, no walled garden. Maybe even 3rd party modular hardware upgrades. That'd be real swell.
8. Re:Old by Xenx · 2017-04-18 15:28 · Score: 1
  
  As has always been the case, if you want the best of everything (or an Apple) you are paying a premium. If you're willing to accept a step down in one or more categories, the price will drop off greatly. It isn't anything unique to this market.
  
  In the case of the Moto G4 plus, you're talking a smaller and lower res screen, slower download/upload speeds, much slower cpu and gpu, and an older version of bluetooth. The $250 Moto is only 2gb of ram and 16gb of storage. $300 for the 4gb and 64gb. You might of gotten a deal or just generalizing. All that said, I'm not knocking the choice. I'm just saying there is a trade off.
9. Re: Old by Anne+Thwacks · 2017-04-18 20:06 · Score: 2
  
  I have a J7, with dual sim, huge removable battery, SD card slot, etc. I do miss the "Note" feature but the curved screen edge is a serious no-no if you want something to draw schematics on.
  Samsung also make models Ax to Xx, Yx, and Zx, for a wide range of "x". You can avoid the Sx without any significant pain. They could probably slim down the range without losing a lot of customers.
  If you want significant computing power, used Sun M series mainframes cost under $1,000. I admit that that a 42U rack probably won't fit in your pocket, and the fans deliver 80dB background noise, but if you want cheap computing power, you probably need to make some concessions. Personally, I am willing to go without the extreme compute power on my Smart phone in the interests of battery life.
  
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  Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
10. Re:Old by ranton · 2017-04-18 21:51 · Score: 1
  
  I predict in 2 years we'll be buying AI cards in addition to our GPUs. If you're a gamer that is.
  You may not need that "for gamers only" qualifier in a few years if AI becomes more ubiquitous in consumer applications. While its possible most if not all of that processing would be done in the cloud, there could certainly be a need for local deep neural network processing to run the personal assistant apps of the near future.
  
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  -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
11. Re:Old by Bongo · 2017-04-18 22:20 · Score: 1
  
  And I remember Pournelle in Byte magazine questioning the need for pre-empive multitasking. :-D
  I guess, since the focus switched to phones, we've been waiting for phone CPUs to catch up to desktop ones, but that doesn't mean we don't need nor won't use more power. It is just a transition phase.
12. Re:Old by thegarbz · 2017-04-18 23:02 · Score: 1
  
  where any tiny increase in performance was worthwhile
  Back then a tiny increase in performance was a major leap. Yeah adding 33MHz now seems silly, like a bug in your dynamic clocking routine. Back then it was 100% improvement in performance.
13. Re:Old by Gussington · 2017-04-20 22:06 · Score: 1
  
  The summary reads a lot like the PC magazines I used to read 20 years ago, where any tiny increase in performance was worthwhile.
  Thank goodness we're at the stage where any x64 processor from the last few years will be plenty good enough for most people, and benchmarks are largely meaningless
  I am looking forward to the day when it's the same with phones.
  That day is now. The media/marketing might be hyping latest and greatest, but I'm starting to see more people opt for cheap and cheerful 'good enough' phones over these overpriced flagship devices. I recently bought an Oppo F1S to replace my old Note5. It cost 1/4 the price of the new S8 and is good enough for what I need (it actually is a really good phone). I know at least three other people in my circle that have made similar choices.
14. Re:Old by Gussington · 2017-04-20 22:09 · Score: 1
  
  I recall a PC magazine article from 1981 questioning the value of these new 16 bit microprocessors - what did we need them for? WordStar and Visicalc ran perfectly well on a Z-80 with CP/M, so surely additional speed was pointless for most people.
  Not all growth is infinite. Desktops currently offer more processing power than most laptops, yet laptops are more popular. At some point the tech reaches 'good enough', and speed is no longer the major priority
15. Re:Old by Namarrgon · 2017-04-21 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  Until new and more-demanding uses become possible, then common. The point is, our needs tend to grow to match available processing power, so as faster laptops are created, more powerful software will be made available to use it, and laptop users will come to demand the new capabilities (which were previously available on desktops but not worth trading away mobility). And since some industries will be demanding much more CPU power for a very long time yet, it's likely that overall growth will continue for some time, and even if it's not driven by laptop users, they will benefit and come to use (then require) the increased power that trickles down to them.
  
  --
  Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
16. Re:Old by Gussington · 2017-04-23 23:34 · Score: 1
  
  Until new and more-demanding uses become possible, then common. The point is, our needs tend to grow to match available processing power, so as faster laptops are created, more powerful software will be made available to use it .
  Such as?
  Sure a small percentage of users use more powerful apps, but most users use email, browsing, facebook etc, stuff that still works well on 10 year old hardware.
  Phones are reaching that point the PCs got to in about 2005 when processing power no longer mattered for most people, and other things became more important to buyers. In fact up until 6 months ago I was still using my old laptop from 2007 until it finally gave up on me.
17. Re:Old by Namarrgon · 2017-04-24 10:45 · Score: 1
  
  Games are the obvious thing to point to, and popular applications like photo and video editing, VR is becoming a thing, but there's also an entire field of neural-networks developing right now - speech and picture recognition, behavioral prediction - which is very processor-intensive. And future applications we don't know much about yet - lightfield video promises to suck down any resources we can find.
  Sure you can run legacy apps on legacy hardware, but new hardware enables new apps that require that new hardware. And a big reason you can get away with relatively old hardware today is that a lot of the new & intensive work has been offloaded to massive server arrays, where any cheap phone with a network link can use it. Which is fine for some things, but I also see a growing preference for local storage and processing rather than sending your every habit to the cloud. Maybe CPUs will soon be powerful enough to run a genuinely personal assistant entirely locally...
  
  --
  Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
18. Re:Old by Gussington · 2017-04-26 22:41 · Score: 1
  
  And a big reason you can get away with relatively old hardware today is that a lot of the new & intensive work has been offloaded to massive server arrays, where any cheap phone with a network link can use it.
  
  Exactly which is why once you reach 'good enough' people stop caring. I think we have reached that point with mobile devices. (if you take China as an example, powerful devices from Apple and Samsung are losing market share to the likes of Oppo and Vivo who make 'good enough' versions of very similar devices.
  
  Which is fine for some things, but I also see a growing preference for local storage and processing rather than sending your every habit to the cloud. Maybe CPUs will soon be powerful enough to run a genuinely personal assistant entirely locally...
  But why would you? It'll cost more and perform worse.
19. Re:Old by Namarrgon · 2017-04-27 11:27 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly which is why once you reach 'good enough' people stop caring.
  Sure, but that doesn't mean the demand for more power isn't there, it's just coming from other people - the server owners, for example, but also people who play games and all the others I mentioned. The many people who don't care about faster hardware will eventually end up with it anyway, when they next replace their hardware, and now software vendors can target a more powerful platform. Not everyone plays demanding 3D games, but everyone's GPUs got faster anyway.
  
  But why would you? It'll cost more and perform worse.
  You may not care to - but the demand is there, whether from privacy-conscious consumers or part vendors supplying to Google. That's why CPUs now include co-processors for maths, graphics, and video encoding, to meet the needs of a wide range of people, and the software for things most people do now can take advantage of all of these. Adding a new neural-network co-processor as well seems inevitable to me, and thus before long a local assistant will be able to perform "good enough" and cost the same, so they'll be commonly available.
  
  --
  Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Incremental improvements... by drew_92123 · 2017-04-18 12:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's all they're making, not because they can't do better, rather there's not much profit in it... All of humanity is being held back by greed. If not for greed medical science would have already advanced our average life spans well into the triple digits with immortality just around the corner... but nooooooo..... we're all gonna die young because of a few greedy pricks.
1. Re:Incremental improvements... by Highdude702 · 2017-04-18 12:25 · Score: 1
  
  i do believe you are 100% correct there.
2. Re:Incremental improvements... by gravewax · 2017-04-18 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  What possible reason is their for them to do significantly better? They are a business and need to be profitable or they cease to exist, if that is greed then sure. Most would call it common sense and survival.
3. Re:Incremental improvements... by just+another+AC · 2017-04-18 13:22 · Score: 1
  
  That's all they're making, not because they can't do better, rather there's not much profit in it... All of humanity is being held back by greed. If not for greed medical science would have already advanced our average life spans well into the triple digits with immortality just around the corner... but nooooooo..... we're all gonna die young because of a few greedy pricks.
  Citation needed.
  We don't know what we could have been discovered.
  I don't like consumerism and the current dominating corpratocracy either, but even if we suspect that profit motives are holding us back, we do not have crystal balls into alternative realities to put numbers like that out there as fact. But I 100% agree that there are people we could've saved from dying if we cared about people over $
Still slower than iphone 7 by Anonymous Coward · 2017-04-18 12:27 · Score: 4, Informative

Tested for real world usage and its slower than an iphone 7 https://youtu.be/OX4JucpvbJM
1. Re: Still slower than iphone 7 by Anonymous Coward · 2017-04-18 13:52 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  In the real world, people don't load apps one after another like that.
  Try this speed test, send an email with two attachments. Or this one, set an mp3/acc as a ring tone. Or sync your phone via nfc with a Bluetooth speaker.
2. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by gravewax · 2017-04-18 15:54 · Score: 2, Troll
  
  that is your idea of real world usage? WTF? are you on acid while using your phone?
3. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by Anonymous Coward · 2017-04-18 22:44 · Score: 1
  
  That's not performance testing but I'm glad people think it is because it keeps me in business. There are two fundamental problems with it. First, no one uses their phones like that. You don't launch Netflix and then immediately switch to another app, you launch Netflix and watch Netflix. I don't care if Netflix takes half a second longer to load as long as my movie doesn't stutter when my wife messages me 100 different pictures of my son eating popcorn with his playdate. That's real world usage.
  Second, a large number of those apps pull data from the internet on startup (Netflix, Uber, Zynga... seriously.. wtf plays Zynga games anymore?) So unless you're using an isolated access point with no interference and dedicated bandwidth the "performance" of the phones is going to be dependent on how many devices are on the same AP and who's downloading what over your office network connection. If you tested the iPhone 7 in the morning when no one is in the office and then 10 people come over to look at the S8 because it's new-shiny and all their phones jump on the same AP, it's network performance is going to degrade and the "load time" for the apps that require network connections is going to slow down. Yes, I know they're not transferring that much data but it adds up.
  So no, this is not a speed test. It's click bait.
4. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by thegarbz · 2017-04-18 23:04 · Score: 1
  
  real world usage
  I don't think you know what this term means.
5. Re: Still slower than iphone 7 by bernywork · 2017-04-19 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  What the test shows is that the apple hardware is ahead of the, well, every else hardware, they're all using qualcomm chips there though. Their CPUs and OS load apps faster and do more than what the latest android platform is doing.
  Would I get an iPhone? No, everything I do, all the apps I've bought, email, everything I've done, it's all tied into android.
  When it comes to CPU and app switching though, (And that's a lot of what you are doing), is going into your phone for a task and maybe doing something else...e.g. I've got an email, oh, I'll just check facebook, oh, I should send a txt msg / whatsapp / viber / FB messenger / hangouts / whatever to a friend. That's user experience, and that's what they're showing. It takes less time to do these things on iPhone. I still wouldn't buy one, but if I did, I guess I'd get a couple of minutes a day of my life back...
  
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  Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
6. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by Dixie_Flatline · 2017-04-19 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  The iPhone 7 is water resistant.
7. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by Overzeetop · 2017-04-19 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't the test of loading app after app to see how long it takes them to start a measure of time to compile the Android bytecode vs load the iOS pre-compiled executable into memory? Won't Android pretty much always lose that for any but the smallest or simplest of programs? I'd think even a 12 core Xeon at 4GHz on a Mac would lose to the iPhone in that case.
  I'll be honest, I'm trying to come up with a use case for raw speed on a phone outside of gaming and I'm pretty stumped. None of the applications for handsets have the complexity of a CPU/GPU heavy desktop app like AutoCAD or Photoshop or Premiere. There aren't any real CFD or FEM programs which allow for any real-world complexity.
  It's good to have fast phones, but I'm at a loss for the value of processor speed.
  
  --
  Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
8. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by uvajed_ekil · 2017-04-19 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  you will get modded to hell by apple fanbois for that, how dare you question a contrived scenario to make an IPhone look best. heaven forbid they actually compare real world scenarios.
  The iphone 7 runs iOS apps way, way waaayy faster than any Android phone, which is a fact you can't deny, so it must be better!
  
  --
  This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
9. Re:Still slower than iphone 7 by gravewax · 2017-04-19 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  It is simple. you use real test cases. IPhone would probably win in a lot of them too, but the point is it would then be a real world test not some bullshit. e.g. how long to take photo, attach photo to an email and send it. How long to send an SMS respond to an SMS from the start screen, how long to look up a contact in your address book and phone person etc etc etc. those are real world tests.
and improved battery life by MouseR · 2017-04-18 12:28 · Score: 1

Eheheh... show me (but aim away from my face).
Apparently, it's virtually the same battery design .
1. Re:and improved battery life by Ranbot · 2017-04-19 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed... and I want to know how those batteries hold up 1-2 years from now. A battery that is constantly drained and recharged to the max will lose long-term effectiveness. Cell phone manufacturers use their OS to create "minimum" and "maximum" battery charges that will conserve the battery's life time, but these out-of-the-box battery life comparisons don't reflect long-term battery life.
2. Re:and improved battery life by Overzeetop · 2017-04-19 03:57 · Score: 1
  
  IIRC, the Verge claims that the battery life is just meh, but that the overall power design is supposed to allow it to hold 95(?)% of it's original charge (at full cap) after two years.
  I think they're all just lying about everything at this point, because nobody can really test them properly.
  
  --
  Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
3. Re:and improved battery life by Ranbot · 2017-04-19 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  IIRC, the Verge claims that the battery life is just meh, but that the overall power design is supposed to allow it to hold 95(?)% of it's original charge (at full cap) after two years.
  I think they're all just lying about everything at this point, because nobody can really test them properly.
  ...and if 2 years later you discover they were lying about the battery life it's far too late to do anything about it.
  But, FWIW, my wife and I both bought Samsung S5's about 2 years ago and the batteries are still holding up well. So, maybe they aren't lying...if you trust them to keep consistent battery/power management design 3 generations later [and not explode].
And S8 with a Exynos 8895 10nm octa-core? by felixrising · 2017-04-18 22:04 · Score: 1

So, what about the S8 with Samsung's own Exynos 8895 10nm octa-core?? They are doing the S8 with that SoC too....
1. Re:And S8 with a Exynos 8895 10nm octa-core? by Holi · 2017-04-19 00:08 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah but only for the eurotrash outside the US.
  
  I kid, I am just jealous that Motorola keeps the Exynos chips out.
  
  --
  Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
So Samsung isn't cheating on benchmarks any more? by Torp · 2017-04-19 00:53 · Score: 1

Have they checked by renaming the apk etc... ?

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I apologize for the lack of a signature.
usage tests show it's slower than an old iphone by goombah99 · 2017-04-19 01:28 · Score: 1

http://bgr.com/2017/04/17/gala...
Old model iPhone smokes the latest androids any way you can measure it. The iphone 7 beats the G8 by more than the G8 beats the previous snapdragon. So rather than leapfrogging the Snapdragon keeps ramming headfirst into the iPhone's rear end.
To be fair there is one spec the new G8 does win on, and that's straightup numberical benchmark using multi-core. it' wins by a small margin. But loses by a factor of 2 on single core processes. Since no one actually uses their phone as a numerical calculation optimizing the multiple cores this spec seems to indicate the snapdragon is not optimized in ways that benefit an actual operating phone.

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Who Cares? by BrendaEM · 2017-04-19 03:07 · Score: 1

It's not like it has: A bigger screen for an easier to use phone, Better battery life with less charging, Moe memory for less swapping to Flash, Replaceable flash because it wears out, A keyboard, because I can't type well on a screen, because I use my thumbs for ridged backing (like when you peel a potatoes.) A better user interface, because you still can't do as much with your phone as a computer from the 1900s, A more durable phone, we drop them, A matte screen because glossy is stupid outdoors, A better lens on the camera, A larger sensor for lower light snapshots without all that grain, or better reception, because we all want that. I feel my old Galaxy Note 3 is fast enough. If you want me to want a phone, fix some other things.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Clearly faked. by mjwx · 2017-04-19 10:41 · Score: 1

You didn't provide any data.

You provided a video from EverythingApplePro which doesn't sound biased at all.

Please post their testing methodology so it can be repeated, otherwise all you've given us is fake news.

--
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.