Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has been at iDevice.ro for more than a week thanks to the Orange Smartphone Tester program, and during this time I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with it. Today, however, I will talk about the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus compared to the iPhone 7 Plus, which are the most popular smartphones at the moment.
Before I get to the impressions, I'll tell you that the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus smartphone model that I received is equipped with an Exynos 8895 chip that has an octa-core processor and 4 GB of RAM. The iPhone 7 Plus, on the other hand, has a quad-core A10 Fusion processor in which Apple has integrated 3 GB of RAM, but these technical differences are practically invisible when it comes to normal use.
Advantage in "synthetic" performances, not in reality
In some synthetic benchmark tests, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has better results than the iPhone 7 Plus, but the differences are a maximum of 10%, and this depends on the resolution used and how hot the Samsung product is. In others, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is inferior to the iPhone 7 Plus, but the differences in scores depend on the same things, the standard resolution of 2220 x 1080 pixels being very close to that of the iPhone 7 Plus.
Well, using the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus at its standard resolution and the iPhone 7 Plus at the only resolution that can be set, the user experience is good, but neither terminal wins in terms of speed. We start with unlocking, which is faster on the iPhone 7 Plus with Touch ID enabled and slower on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus when the fingerprint is used to unlock the device.
The iPhone 7 Plus is faster than the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus when it comes to unlocking when using the iris scanner, but the differences disappear if facial recognition is chosen. Practically, here it matters a lot how you want to do the security, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus can be slower in some situations, so you have to be careful how you set it.
Now moving on to applications and games, well things are quite simple, Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and iPhone 7 Plus having similar performances in these functions. Each of them opens applications a little faster, or a little slower, but overall the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is at least equal to the iPhone 7 Plus in opening native or third-party applications, the situation being different for games.
In the case of games, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus doesn't manage to do as well as the iPhone 7 Plus when opening, and that could be related to the way each game is developed. The blame cannot fall on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus in this regard, but it should be mentioned that some games will load more difficult on it than on the iPhone, as you have already seen in some tests.
How important is the 4 GB RAM of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus?
You already know that one of the big problems of Android is the management of applications open in the background and that terminals with less than 6 GB of RAM suffer from this cause. Well, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus does not suffer as much as its predecessors, the Samsung company managing to a good extent to solve the problems of the previous terminals, even if we are not talking about a complete solution.
The usual use of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus will not lead to the reloading of some applications left open in the background, the vast majority remaining open even if you have others left open next to them. If you still start playing complex games on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, or if you do photo/video editing, then things change and some applications in the background will reload.
This problem does not appear on the iPhone 7 Plus because of the operating system thought differently, but on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus problems of this kind can happen if you use its hardware to the maximum. In daily use you should not be affected by this and the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus will work without problems for most people, even if they have many applications open in the background.
There is a possibility that sometimes slight traces of lag appear in the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus interface if there are a lot of applications open in the background, but we are not talking about something that is not found on the iPhone.
A big step forward for the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus
All in all, I am very pleasantly impressed with how Android in the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has evolved to provide a good user experience for customers. It is unlikely that anyone will complain about the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus in the first weeks of use, but the terminal will not even raise eyebrows with its performance test results.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus offers exactly what you need for a good normal use experience, but if you want to do complex tasks with it such as photo/video editing, then you have to expect that the applications in the background will not be saved properly , other inconveniences not existing.
In the following days, the articles on my experience with the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus will continue, so stay close.
You can find more details about the Orange Smartphone Tester program in this page.
