1. would you tell me the avg. power consumption peak of A9 until A10 on t-rex and manhattan 3.1? because i curious about development of apple in term of gpu efficiency and how apple A9-A11 compare with other gpu like adreno and mali.
Why is Samsung even still trying to make Exynos work? Is it just because Apple has their own SoC and they want to belong to the club? Because purely on performance Qualcomm is clearly the superior choice for couple of generations now.
"Why is Samsung even still trying to make Exynos work?"
I would imagine it is because the last time that Qualcomm stumbled they had the fastest chip available. The SD810 was a disaster. If that happens again they need an alternative. But... yeah, this looks very poor today.
Yup, the 810 generation Samsung did what they hadn't done in a long time and used an Exynos CPU in all versions, worldwide. They had to buy an external modem from Qualcomm to use for the NAM variants too for CDMA support, which cost them much more money than just buying a SD810, but the SD810 was garbage and they had a good alternative. Every other phone that generation was horribly slow, especially my BlackBerry Priv.
Samsung uses Exynos for more than just some phones, they use it in their TVs and probably some other products as well. Continued work will help, but also, lower cost compared to buying from Qualcomm.
1. They need SoC for not only their mobile devices, they also have footprint in smart home devices, smart TVs, smart appliances, automotive, etc 2. They've only been behind in two generations and they just started custom core soc. Give it some time.
Personally, I would love to see them support exynos models for more years than the Quallcomm chips, even if it means a performance hit. Phone performance is more than good enough imo so that would be a good tradeoff, and I presume that Samsung would make more money that way long term (keeping components in-house and creating loyal customers).
To decrease reliance on other companies if they need to, and also keep pressure on the companies they do work with.
It's the same with Tizen. They don't need it, but it's a good backup and good leverage. As they are so huge, they can afford to keep developing their own solutions even if few of their products use them.
Hi Andrei, obvious question, why no explicit note 9 review?
You have the hardware, have already done extensive analysis and testing, it would seem that all that remains is to put it into words. (in fact you did abit of it here)
I got the devices quite late as we weren't sampled. The Note9 is very similar to the S9+ which we reviewed earlier in the year besides the S-Pen. Screen is as you'd expect from Samsung (very good) and camera of the Note9 (besides it being same setup as the S9+) has been also tested in the Pixel 3 and Mate 20 reviews:
I wanted to get this piece out instead with the relevant bits of into that people were expecting to see instead of lingering on on a full review, as I have also other articles to get out as well.
Having used both s7 edge and note 9, I can confidently state that the note is more than the s variant with a pen. There are differences and features that adds up to different experience.
As always, what and how you choose to cover is your prerogative. however, my two cents.
1) Samsung note series is one of the tech keynotes of a year, and always worthy of a review, so long as the hardware is available.
2)note series is especially worthy of review because of its technical contrasts from all other flagships. anandtech has been inexplicably reluctant to analyze the s pen. You could do a comparison between the S pen, apple pencil and Microsoft surface stylus for example. Or compare the speed of the micro-sd storage to on board memory. (or with previous Notes). You could even compare the internal audio jack vs that of the dongle-brigade. Point being, the notes unique traits make for many interesting angles of analysis. I see no reason to shy away from them year after year.
3) A Note 9 review 'in pieces' doesn't show up in Google search. A person typing 'note 9 review' is unlikely to come across your excellent camera comparison article for example. A note 9 review, even one that posts links to other articles you've done, is preferable for your page hits.
All comments with respect to your quality work and time/material constraints.
Just wanted to add a voice here - I feel like Lau_Tech's comment is fair, and worth bearing in mind for future prioritization of reviews. It feels like Samsung is the last manufacturer consistently offering one "true flagship" phone with everything but the kitchen sink included. It's a decent halo product that, as was mentioned, allows you to critique the value prospects of other manufacturers who have dropped or are dropping many of the features the Note series retains.
Aside from that, thanks for your dedication to providing quality analysis even when it's not "up-to-the-minute". I'll always show up for it.
Samsung aren't sampling them to Anandtech for a reason and that's because they'll get torn to shreds for things like this. I probably wouldn't have known the performance gap was so horrific until this article came out. The remainder is often well covered in the less indepth media and so repeating it late isn't going to pull in as many views which is what this business is all about. I'd rather see them spend the significant amount of time doing reviews on things which are sampled early enough to compete with other media and therefore keep the site well funded and able to attract good writers.
I do feel this is a good compromise in that they are doing the analysis of some very important aspects of this phone that most people will be overlooking but not wasting the time doing a full review and focussing instead on something else.
This is actually something that is really going to put me off Samsung. I'm pretty happy with my S8 despite the bloatware (some of it is actually useful, a lot of it is just turned off) but I have the misfortune to live in the UK. As a result, seeing I'm going to be paying a similar amount for a phone that is marketed and named as being the same as the SD model, I don't expect the performance to be HALF what everyone else gets on the more performance critical benches. There is a huge difference between a face paced game moving at a sustained 25FPS and a sustained 50FPS. One is very playable whilst the other is frankly borderline not and if this is an average FPS then I suspect there will be periods of frame rates too low for decent playability. This is not acceptable for a full price flagship. This is worse than Nvidia having different models of GTX1060 - at least they're vaguely similar in performance.
My advice to people wanting a good value but good performing phone has been to get an S7 or S8. The S9 is not a contender and I think the E9810 needs to tank to convince Samsung to stop rolling out chips which are just plain awful and pretending they're in any way comparable to a SD model of the same phone. It's frankly a con in my book. I wonder how this compares to recent mid range SD models like the 6 series? That would be very interesting if QC could produce SoCs going into phones a third of the price which are competitive on performance.....
When note 9 was in preorder, all the reviews were the snapdragon 845 variant, draw the conclusions for yourself, but for me it's obvious what samsung did. :)
You might have a case with the consumer ombudsman. The UK also has class action lawsuits, but as it's still relatively new to the UK, it'll probably be even more troublesome.
If there's a new apple device then there would be a very thorough in depth review, as for a new samsung flagship: they do not mind it seems. And that is really apple biased. The know very well at anandtech how to avoid exposure to samsung phones and how to generate a lot of attention to apple phones......
I would think the 20-minute limit on max GPU performance is because that’s the typical maximum length of time people play games on mobile phones for. The designers are letting temperatures reach battery-damaging levels to secure performance — but only briefly.
There are no issues. I have the 128 GB Exynos Note 9. It's absolutely perfect. So, e.g. when I go to bed, I usually have 50% of battery left. Maybe with the QC model I would have 55%. Do I care? Nope. Same with performance. Everything works flawlessly. Maybe the QC model scores higher in benchmarks, so what? In real world usage you won't notice any difference. Would I notice the difference between the Exynos models DAC vs. the inferior DAC in the QC model? Maybe..
As someone who's owned a few generations of Exynos Samsung devices, I'd warn you away from messing with custom kernels. They tend to be flaky, unreliably supported and more hassle to implement than they're worth in terms of performance. Try out the device, see if the performance suits you and buy accordingly. You won't get the full set of Note 9 features from anyone else so it should really be about what you want from the phone rather than its absolute performance (within acceptable boundaries).
Not really, only one kernel and it's not that active in development. That part of the forums is so dead that I can't believe it... and this for the best phone samsung offers currently. Can understand the devs tho, why buy, keep and spend time on device with such a massive failure of a SOC. The phone is good in real world usage tho, I have one, but everyone who tested both exynos and sd variants said that the difference is a lot bigger than they was prepared to be and kept the sd. :)
Excellent piece Andrei, thanks. Especially the battery part and fuel gauge. Please kindly do mention the workings of them. Very much interested in this aspect especially how the iPhone does and their "manual throttle switch". I read your post on how Samsung caps the battery charging to keep more lifetime, on XDA, this confuses me about the battery longevity discrepancy that you mentioned. To add my OP3 fuel gauge chip also blocks installing the 3Ts higher spec battery (3000 vs 3300) and voltages, though a developer managed to get the reading of cycles from it (Sultanxda) and the mentioning of the GPU and thermals is really fantastic coverage, I believe the S.LSI and Samsung Mobile have bureaucracy issues like Intel and lost their direction, just like how LG is doing badly with marketing and their drastic change after Exec shakeup after failed Quarter results. Its unfortunate that they dropped their unique design with V40 and G7, even the marketing is bad and going mainstream like camera game on their site " 5 cameras". Your point is definitely valid with Huawei execution but that phone is against user control with EMUI and rollback bricks and BL unlock and total copypasta design.
I wanted to import a Note 9 but the ebay and price where I wanted to import are too expensive. And the LTE bands issues with carrier aggregation in US LTE Network. And the 9810 issues with perf and battery issues, though the Custom ROM scene is excellent with Exynos devices, Note 9.
I picked up a V30S instead for 500 bucks, US warranty and has fairly good battery life and underrated specs it has Qnovo Adaptive charging technology which saves the battery from over doing its cycles and reduce the fatigue. Maybe you can look at them, Sony also does this Qnovo technology.
It's a bit too much to cover as it goes into the actual registers of the fuelgauge and the battery drivers. In general you can just read up on Maxim's ModelGauge algos.
@Andrei: Thanks for this review and the analysis. I know you wouldn't write this w/o strong, more direct evidence, but would you care to speculate on how the strange behavior of the snapdragon Note 9 in the graphics benchmark (allowing temp to rise quite high) might affect battery longevity (actual useful lifetime, as in number of charges before it degrades)? I for one am concerned whenever a Li-ion device is allowing itself to get quite toasty. Lastly, there is also the suspicion that Samsung has massaged the SoC software to recognize GFx and Aztec and allow a "performance mode" when these are detected.
Regarding Samsung's insistence of using its S-LSI in-house Exynos whenever possible: I am not even sure that it ends up costing Samsung that much less than using QC's 845. I believe it's a case of what in banking is called throwing good money after bad, i.e. the reluctance to say "well, this (Exynos/Mongoose) didn't work out", and move one. Until the most recent Kirin, the Android mobile SoC landscape really had two players: QC and Samsung. If you lived in a country that only gets the Exynos, there were few competitive non-Exynos handsets to have at the higher end. However, the competitive landscape has changed, with the newest A-76 Kirin designs giving Samsung a run for its money. I wonder if the desire to move $ 800 - $1100 handsets will overcome Samsung's reluctance to use QC flagship SoCs for Europe and Asia also. Otherwise, they're in for a world of hurt. I would be surprised if Huawei isn't working on a pen-input device based on its P 20 Pro to go after the upcoming Note 10.
> I know you wouldn't write this w/o strong, more direct evidence, but would you care to speculate on how the strange behavior of the snapdragon Note 9 in the graphics benchmark (allowing temp to rise quite high) might affect battery longevity (actual useful lifetime, as in number of charges before it degrades)?
As you say, I don't have any data on this and can't say anything other than it gets hotter than it should be allowed to. In most games it's not an issue but that's besides the point.
Thanks Andrei! I was really surprised by Samsung's apparent willingness to have the 845 Note heat up to levels that one usually wants to avoid when dealing with Li-ion batteries. Especially given the debacle they had with the battery malfunction in their Note 8. At least for here in the US, they have just opened themselves up for a class-action lawsuit if Note 9s have battery issues also. It can now be argued that any damages to the battery are due to defective software that allows overly high temperatures, resulting in premature failure.
Probably because, as long as they have a viable second-source, they can beat up on QC to keep the price of the Snapdragon low. "You want how much for 50 million Snapdragons? That's too much. We'll buy a few at that price - say, 20 million - just to keep our relationship intact, and use our Exynos for the other 30 million".
Wow, what a disappointment of Exynos performance of S9. Really pity that on European market is not Snapdragon version available as much worth for the same money. Hopefully with S10 will get difference smaller but it's only wish for several years already.
Actually for us the phone costs more. Euro is higher than the US $ + they also add atleast 100 on top of the us price. It's 1100 euro (1240$) vs 1000$. :)
I had to buy an import in order to get a SD845 version of my S9+. Hope Samsung fix future Exynos SoCs, because the gap in performance and battery life is just ridiculous and not acceptable. Infact Exynos 9810 isn't even acceptable for a high-end device.
Can't argue with the numbers, however, anecdotally, my exy S9+ feels plenty fast with decent battery. I haven't heard anyone who doesn't haunt XDA etc. actually complain about exy, even techies. So I can only imagine that the SD845 version is even better as a phone LOL
People don't get to hold the both variants to see the difference. Everyone who did and mind you - coming prepared for a difference into it - said that he is surprised how big it is and kept the SD variant.
Some of these results for the Exynos look very dodgy, including one subtest where the 3 year old Snapdragon 820 scores higher. I wonder how accurate or representative these PC mark tests are, because that is all that the author has used to trash the Exynos 9810. Other tests/suites need to be run to validate these results. I am finding it hard to believe that an SOC with 'fat' cores will lag behind last years SOCs in many tests.
It's absolutely possible. Consider the current state of AMD graphics vs. NVIDIA - Vega doesn't really compete with the 1080, let alone the 2080. Then add in the fact that in mobile, inefficiency counts double, sinceit both drains the battery and causes thermals to spike; throttling that 'fat' CPU.
The author used other tests for graphics and threw in a few js benchmarks. I also think that others have responded about why having "fat cores" doesn't automatically mean better perf. Briefly, unless your data set is tiny, you have to make sure that stalls happen as infrequently and briefly as possible. This requires a very well executed cache, a smart memory controller, and software that is well aware of how best to make use of it all. There's more detail in the earlier articles about the issues with the 9810.
My iPhone 7 is slower than my Pixel 2XL is real usage, and constantly shuts down updating of my trading app in the background which is incredibly annoying
Honestly, I don't feel even the slightest of those supposed performance setbacks in my Exynos Note 9 ..everything I do is performed flawlessly. The webpage editing on the DeX, even Linux beta on DeX. I just edited and upsampled a 2.5 minute 1080p into 4K video in less than 2 minutes while simultaneously recording it in 60fps 4K via DU recorder (to have an evidence). I'll post it to YouTube of anyone is interested!
Also, the autonomy has been nothing short of great with an exceptionally consistent results. The device constantly gives 10h SoT (calculated). And again, if anyone is interested I can provide link to screenshots and battery statistics. Andrei maybe one the most knowledgeable guy about phones on the planet, but I start to question the objectivity of his overall assessments. You diss the Exynos autonomy based just on one single battery benchmark?!? Sorry but that's just NOT a good argument. In real world use, the differences are negligible, even sometimes favorable to Exynos version, such as in the case of GSMArena tests where E8990 had significantly better standby efficiency and overall better result than the SD835.
I actually also got 10-12h SOT and 36h on battery constantly. Without any power saving, 1400p, autobrightness, mixed wifi + some 4g - youtube, facebook, messenger, viber, samsung internet browser, some calls, listening to poweramp hifi for 1-2h and light gaming (for example epsxe running diablo 1). With heavy gaming (fortnite on ultra, vainglory on high) in long sessions around 3.5-5h I always get around 7h+ SOT.
The phone is really cold, even when heavy gaming is involved + the performance is good/smooth. I wonder if sd note 9 high sustain scores in GPU are because of insane temperatures and if that's the case - this is a mistake that will fry your phone if you game a lot... as games like fortnite on ultra will cause massive overheat when played for long time even if they perform well.
Otherwise there is no logic why the note 9 exynos isn't outperforming even slightly the s9 exynos in sustain while the note 9 sd blows the s9+ sd.
One question tho, why the exynos note 9 fail so bad in the GPU sustain performance? The sd845 note 9 shows great gains over the sd845 s9+ variant, why the exynos note doesn't have any gains over the exynos s9? I was expecting that both note phones will have similar benefits over the s9 respectable variants due to the better cooling?
Great article Andrei, why not testing the standby drain?
In my country, only available Exynos version of samsung flagship. And i always notice exynos samsung consume more power in standby.
For example, In the same year-cpu-flagship between exynos and snapdragon, exynos will counsume at least 1% per hour in the night while i sleep, and the snapdragon about 0.3% per hour. And it will be worse in the work hour, exynos need charged in the middle of the day
I’m using S9 plus Exyons 9810 and one plus 6 snapdragon 845, 8 gig of ram, 128GB of storage for couple of month now and noticed that snapdragon 845 good in gaming, but still has some overheating issue in heavy use, battrey life of plus still same as S9 plus Exyons, touch latency of one plus 6 in general not as good as S9 plus Exyons and noticed all snapdragon phones has some issue with touch latency including pixel 2xl.
Power consumption figures are easy, if you use the same hardware & software test tools on each tested smartphone.
First charge to battery to 100 %. Then run tests via the input power source: external hardware cable, which will give accurate power use figures.
Second, use power-use software. These vary imo by brands, versions & models, so are not reliable.
I've used many in-line USB power devices; many brands, models, types, colors, etc. Only the test-laboratory-calibrated units, checked & used by professionals, will give true results.
The test should be redone on android pie (or atleast stated it's no longer valid). Massive scores bumps on everything regarding the exynos version atleast. pcmark is from 5200 to 6000 points overall, small bumps on the web and video category and massive bumps in the other 3 (writing, photo, data). GPU is seeing notable performance gains in every test too (guess it's mostly new drivers related) - 3dmark, antutu gpu, renderscript and so on (eager to test in real world, but if approximation is correct, I would guess around 10-14% increase depending on the workload and that's not bad at all given the poor state exynos 9810/mali g72 mp18 sits).
Not sure how the snapdragon version is doing on android 9 tho, maybe it's also up (but I doubt it will be or atleast by that much as it was really optimised on oreo already).
Correcting myself, web score is 6157 - a lot higher vs the android 8. :) Sad that this article was published before android 9 release. Not that it really matters+sd845 will always be the better SOC no matter what, but I am curious about the changes and to see scientific data about the current tuning as the exynos 9810 is closer to the sd845 in performance, but I think the battery took a hit even is slight.
Also the GPU is seeing 15% more fps in tests like gfx high/mid aztec, manhatan is up too, 3dmark too, antutu gpu too, everything. Really curious about the sustain performance and if it's closer to the sd this time as I feel it allows slightly higher heat. Oh, well... I understand this will never happens as it takes a lot of time and the topic is kinda old + getting absolute with new generation of phones around the corner.
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mfaisalkemal - Friday, November 23, 2018 - link
hi andrei, as always a great in depth analysis!i have two question,
1. would you tell me the avg. power consumption peak of A9 until A10 on t-rex and manhattan 3.1? because i curious about development of apple in term of gpu efficiency and how apple A9-A11 compare with other gpu like adreno and mali.
2. Any plan in review ipad pro 2018?
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
1. I don't have an accurate way to measure power on those devices and won't be investing time to get back to them.2. Brett is working on a review.
Barilla - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Why is Samsung even still trying to make Exynos work? Is it just because Apple has their own SoC and they want to belong to the club? Because purely on performance Qualcomm is clearly the superior choice for couple of generations now.A5 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
The R&D + manufacturing cost is probably less than what QC sells them a Snapdragon package for.They probably do the SD variant for the US because the CDMA patent royalties tip the equation the other way in that market.
goatfajitas - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
"Why is Samsung even still trying to make Exynos work?"I would imagine it is because the last time that Qualcomm stumbled they had the fastest chip available. The SD810 was a disaster. If that happens again they need an alternative. But... yeah, this looks very poor today.
peterfares - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Yup, the 810 generation Samsung did what they hadn't done in a long time and used an Exynos CPU in all versions, worldwide. They had to buy an external modem from Qualcomm to use for the NAM variants too for CDMA support, which cost them much more money than just buying a SD810, but the SD810 was garbage and they had a good alternative. Every other phone that generation was horribly slow, especially my BlackBerry Priv.Targon - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Samsung uses Exynos for more than just some phones, they use it in their TVs and probably some other products as well. Continued work will help, but also, lower cost compared to buying from Qualcomm.ph00ny - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
1. They need SoC for not only their mobile devices, they also have footprint in smart home devices, smart TVs, smart appliances, automotive, etc2. They've only been behind in two generations and they just started custom core soc. Give it some time.
nico_mach - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
Personally, I would love to see them support exynos models for more years than the Quallcomm chips, even if it means a performance hit. Phone performance is more than good enough imo so that would be a good tradeoff, and I presume that Samsung would make more money that way long term (keeping components in-house and creating loyal customers).Tams80 - Monday, December 3, 2018 - link
To decrease reliance on other companies if they need to, and also keep pressure on the companies they do work with.It's the same with Tizen. They don't need it, but it's a good backup and good leverage. As they are so huge, they can afford to keep developing their own solutions even if few of their products use them.
Lau_Tech - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Hi Andrei, obvious question, why no explicit note 9 review?You have the hardware, have already done extensive analysis and testing, it would seem that all that remains is to put it into words. (in fact you did abit of it here)
So why not?
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
I got the devices quite late as we weren't sampled. The Note9 is very similar to the S9+ which we reviewed earlier in the year besides the S-Pen. Screen is as you'd expect from Samsung (very good) and camera of the Note9 (besides it being same setup as the S9+) has been also tested in the Pixel 3 and Mate 20 reviews:https://www.anandtech.com/show/13474/the-google-pi...
I wanted to get this piece out instead with the relevant bits of into that people were expecting to see instead of lingering on on a full review, as I have also other articles to get out as well.
Meteor2 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
I don’t think the same camera hardware in different phones equates to the same camera performance in today’s age of computational photography.shabby - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
That makes no sense, the note 9 is an s9 with an s-pen, nothing more.cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Having used both s7 edge and note 9, I can confidently state that the note is more than the s variant with a pen. There are differences and features that adds up to different experience.levizx - Friday, November 30, 2018 - link
What difference beyond the customisation for the S-Pen?Lau_Tech - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
As always, what and how you choose to cover is your prerogative. however, my two cents.1) Samsung note series is one of the tech keynotes of a year, and always worthy of a review, so long as the hardware is available.
2)note series is especially worthy of review because of its technical contrasts from all other flagships. anandtech has been inexplicably reluctant to analyze the s pen. You could do a comparison between the S pen, apple pencil and Microsoft surface stylus for example. Or compare the speed of the micro-sd storage to on board memory. (or with previous Notes). You could even compare the internal audio jack vs that of the dongle-brigade. Point being, the notes unique traits make for many interesting angles of analysis. I see no reason to shy away from them year after year.
3) A Note 9 review 'in pieces' doesn't show up in Google search. A person typing 'note 9 review' is unlikely to come across your excellent camera comparison article for example. A note 9 review, even one that posts links to other articles you've done, is preferable for your page hits.
All comments with respect to your quality work and time/material constraints.
id4andrei - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Don't forget DEX.Spunjji - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Just wanted to add a voice here - I feel like Lau_Tech's comment is fair, and worth bearing in mind for future prioritization of reviews. It feels like Samsung is the last manufacturer consistently offering one "true flagship" phone with everything but the kitchen sink included. It's a decent halo product that, as was mentioned, allows you to critique the value prospects of other manufacturers who have dropped or are dropping many of the features the Note series retains.Aside from that, thanks for your dedication to providing quality analysis even when it's not "up-to-the-minute". I'll always show up for it.
philehidiot - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Samsung aren't sampling them to Anandtech for a reason and that's because they'll get torn to shreds for things like this. I probably wouldn't have known the performance gap was so horrific until this article came out. The remainder is often well covered in the less indepth media and so repeating it late isn't going to pull in as many views which is what this business is all about. I'd rather see them spend the significant amount of time doing reviews on things which are sampled early enough to compete with other media and therefore keep the site well funded and able to attract good writers.I do feel this is a good compromise in that they are doing the analysis of some very important aspects of this phone that most people will be overlooking but not wasting the time doing a full review and focussing instead on something else.
This is actually something that is really going to put me off Samsung. I'm pretty happy with my S8 despite the bloatware (some of it is actually useful, a lot of it is just turned off) but I have the misfortune to live in the UK. As a result, seeing I'm going to be paying a similar amount for a phone that is marketed and named as being the same as the SD model, I don't expect the performance to be HALF what everyone else gets on the more performance critical benches. There is a huge difference between a face paced game moving at a sustained 25FPS and a sustained 50FPS. One is very playable whilst the other is frankly borderline not and if this is an average FPS then I suspect there will be periods of frame rates too low for decent playability. This is not acceptable for a full price flagship. This is worse than Nvidia having different models of GTX1060 - at least they're vaguely similar in performance.
My advice to people wanting a good value but good performing phone has been to get an S7 or S8. The S9 is not a contender and I think the E9810 needs to tank to convince Samsung to stop rolling out chips which are just plain awful and pretending they're in any way comparable to a SD model of the same phone. It's frankly a con in my book. I wonder how this compares to recent mid range SD models like the 6 series? That would be very interesting if QC could produce SoCs going into phones a third of the price which are competitive on performance.....
cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
When note 9 was in preorder, all the reviews were the snapdragon 845 variant, draw the conclusions for yourself, but for me it's obvious what samsung did. :)Tams80 - Monday, December 3, 2018 - link
You might have a case with the consumer ombudsman.The UK also has class action lawsuits, but as it's still relatively new to the UK, it'll probably be even more troublesome.
Sjokoprins - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
If there's a new apple device then there would be a very thorough in depth review, as for a new samsung flagship: they do not mind it seems.And that is really apple biased.
The know very well at anandtech how to avoid exposure to samsung phones and how to generate a lot of attention to apple phones......
Meteor2 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
I would think the 20-minute limit on max GPU performance is because that’s the typical maximum length of time people play games on mobile phones for. The designers are letting temperatures reach battery-damaging levels to secure performance — but only briefly.jaju123 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
When you read this and realise you just ordered the 512gb Exynos Note 9. :OAre there custom kernels out there that somewhat mitigate these issues?
lmcd - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
The "issues" are bad custom CPU core designs out of Samsung. Kernels don't solve that.It's not "fall on its face" horrible, Samsung's cores still wipe the floor with A53s and A55s. Just not flagship level.
multicorn - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
There are no issues. I have the 128 GB Exynos Note 9. It's absolutely perfect. So, e.g. when I go to bed, I usually have 50% of battery left. Maybe with the QC model I would have 55%. Do I care? Nope. Same with performance. Everything works flawlessly. Maybe the QC model scores higher in benchmarks, so what? In real world usage you won't notice any difference. Would I notice the difference between the Exynos models DAC vs. the inferior DAC in the QC model? Maybe..Spunjji - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
As someone who's owned a few generations of Exynos Samsung devices, I'd warn you away from messing with custom kernels. They tend to be flaky, unreliably supported and more hassle to implement than they're worth in terms of performance. Try out the device, see if the performance suits you and buy accordingly. You won't get the full set of Note 9 features from anyone else so it should really be about what you want from the phone rather than its absolute performance (within acceptable boundaries).cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Not really, only one kernel and it's not that active in development. That part of the forums is so dead that I can't believe it... and this for the best phone samsung offers currently. Can understand the devs tho, why buy, keep and spend time on device with such a massive failure of a SOC. The phone is good in real world usage tho, I have one, but everyone who tested both exynos and sd variants said that the difference is a lot bigger than they was prepared to be and kept the sd. :)Quantumz0d - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Excellent piece Andrei, thanks.Especially the battery part and fuel gauge. Please kindly do mention the workings of them. Very much interested in this aspect especially how the iPhone does and their "manual throttle switch". I read your post on how Samsung caps the battery charging to keep more lifetime, on XDA, this confuses me about the battery longevity discrepancy that you mentioned. To add my OP3 fuel gauge chip also blocks installing the 3Ts higher spec battery (3000 vs 3300) and voltages, though a developer managed to get the reading of cycles from it (Sultanxda) and the mentioning of the GPU and thermals is really fantastic coverage, I believe the S.LSI and Samsung Mobile have bureaucracy issues like Intel and lost their direction, just like how LG is doing badly with marketing and their drastic change after Exec shakeup after failed Quarter results. Its unfortunate that they dropped their unique design with V40 and G7, even the marketing is bad and going mainstream like camera game on their site " 5 cameras". Your point is definitely valid with Huawei execution but that phone is against user control with EMUI and rollback bricks and BL unlock and total copypasta design.
I wanted to import a Note 9 but the ebay and price where I wanted to import are too expensive. And the LTE bands issues with carrier aggregation in US LTE Network. And the 9810 issues with perf and battery issues, though the Custom ROM scene is excellent with Exynos devices, Note 9.
I picked up a V30S instead for 500 bucks, US warranty and has fairly good battery life and underrated specs it has Qnovo Adaptive charging technology which saves the battery from over doing its cycles and reduce the fatigue. Maybe you can look at them, Sony also does this Qnovo technology.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
> Please kindly do mention the workings of them.It's a bit too much to cover as it goes into the actual registers of the fuelgauge and the battery drivers. In general you can just read up on Maxim's ModelGauge algos.
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/design/partners...
> To add my OP3 fuel gauge chip also blocks installing the 3Ts higher spec battery (3000 vs 3300)
In general kernels can't do anything because the PMIC/FG is initialised by the bootloader, which is again a whole other topic.
Quantumz0d - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Thanks, that should help. Yes, OnePlus patched it with a firmware update iirc.eastcoast_pete - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
@Andrei: Thanks for this review and the analysis. I know you wouldn't write this w/o strong, more direct evidence, but would you care to speculate on how the strange behavior of the snapdragon Note 9 in the graphics benchmark (allowing temp to rise quite high) might affect battery longevity (actual useful lifetime, as in number of charges before it degrades)? I for one am concerned whenever a Li-ion device is allowing itself to get quite toasty. Lastly, there is also the suspicion that Samsung has massaged the SoC software to recognize GFx and Aztec and allow a "performance mode" when these are detected.Regarding Samsung's insistence of using its S-LSI in-house Exynos whenever possible: I am not even sure that it ends up costing Samsung that much less than using QC's 845. I believe it's a case of what in banking is called throwing good money after bad, i.e. the reluctance to say "well, this (Exynos/Mongoose) didn't work out", and move one. Until the most recent Kirin, the Android mobile SoC landscape really had two players: QC and Samsung. If you lived in a country that only gets the Exynos, there were few competitive non-Exynos handsets to have at the higher end. However, the competitive landscape has changed, with the newest A-76 Kirin designs giving Samsung a run for its money. I wonder if the desire to move $ 800 - $1100 handsets will overcome Samsung's reluctance to use QC flagship SoCs for Europe and Asia also. Otherwise, they're in for a world of hurt. I would be surprised if Huawei isn't working on a pen-input device based on its P 20 Pro to go after the upcoming Note 10.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
> I know you wouldn't write this w/o strong, more direct evidence, but would you care to speculate on how the strange behavior of the snapdragon Note 9 in the graphics benchmark (allowing temp to rise quite high) might affect battery longevity (actual useful lifetime, as in number of charges before it degrades)?As you say, I don't have any data on this and can't say anything other than it gets hotter than it should be allowed to. In most games it's not an issue but that's besides the point.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Thanks Andrei! I was really surprised by Samsung's apparent willingness to have the 845 Note heat up to levels that one usually wants to avoid when dealing with Li-ion batteries. Especially given the debacle they had with the battery malfunction in their Note 8. At least for here in the US, they have just opened themselves up for a class-action lawsuit if Note 9s have battery issues also. It can now be argued that any damages to the battery are due to defective software that allows overly high temperatures, resulting in premature failure.HStewart - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
I am curious about Note 8 compared to Note 9 on your comparison list.With my Note 8 the OS detects which applications use the batter. One thing is sure, when I switch iPhone 6 to Note 8, I used my phone a lot more.
HStewart - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Just to be clear - not on specs which was listed - but on performance battery life and …For me the phone is fast enough - how much performances does one need - battery life is different story
But the battery life on Galaxy Watch is a total different story, I get almost a week on it.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
We never had a Note8 to test.FrankSchwab - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Probably because, as long as they have a viable second-source, they can beat up on QC to keep the price of the Snapdragon low. "You want how much for 50 million Snapdragons? That's too much. We'll buy a few at that price - say, 20 million - just to keep our relationship intact, and use our Exynos for the other 30 million".Iczeman - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Wow, what a disappointment of Exynos performance of S9. Really pity that on European market is not Snapdragon version available as much worth for the same money. Hopefully with S10 will get difference smaller but it's only wish for several years already.cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Actually for us the phone costs more. Euro is higher than the US $ + they also add atleast 100 on top of the us price. It's 1100 euro (1240$) vs 1000$. :)vivekvs1992 - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
Obvious question.. Why is note 8 not on any of the charts?? I'd be more interested in comparing note 8 rather than lg g6..B3an - Monday, November 26, 2018 - link
The Exynos 9810 is such a massive flop.I had to buy an import in order to get a SD845 version of my S9+. Hope Samsung fix future Exynos SoCs, because the gap in performance and battery life is just ridiculous and not acceptable. Infact Exynos 9810 isn't even acceptable for a high-end device.
wintermute000 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Can't argue with the numbers, however, anecdotally, my exy S9+ feels plenty fast with decent battery. I haven't heard anyone who doesn't haunt XDA etc. actually complain about exy, even techies. So I can only imagine that the SD845 version is even better as a phone LOLcha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
People don't get to hold the both variants to see the difference. Everyone who did and mind you - coming prepared for a difference into it - said that he is surprised how big it is and kept the SD variant.LiverpoolFC5903 - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Some of these results for the Exynos look very dodgy, including one subtest where the 3 year old Snapdragon 820 scores higher. I wonder how accurate or representative these PC mark tests are, because that is all that the author has used to trash the Exynos 9810. Other tests/suites need to be run to validate these results. I am finding it hard to believe that an SOC with 'fat' cores will lag behind last years SOCs in many tests.GreenReaper - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
It's absolutely possible. Consider the current state of AMD graphics vs. NVIDIA - Vega doesn't really compete with the 1080, let alone the 2080. Then add in the fact that in mobile, inefficiency counts double, sinceit both drains the battery and causes thermals to spike; throttling that 'fat' CPU.tuxRoller - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
The author used other tests for graphics and threw in a few js benchmarks.I also think that others have responded about why having "fat cores" doesn't automatically mean better perf. Briefly,
unless your data set is tiny, you have to make sure that stalls happen as infrequently and briefly as possible. This requires a very well executed cache, a smart memory controller, and software that is well aware of how best to make use of it all.
There's more detail in the earlier articles about the issues with the 9810.
s.yu - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Thanks for another fun article!This would provide guidance for buying to more people if released earlier in the product cycle though :)
AceMcLoud - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Happy to see my iPhone 6s still holding up to 2018 Android "flagships".Speedfriend - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
My iPhone 7 is slower than my Pixel 2XL is real usage, and constantly shuts down updating of my trading app in the background which is incredibly annoyingAceMcLoud - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Hmm, exact opposite experience for me. What trading app are you using?darkich - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Honestly, I don't feel even the slightest of those supposed performance setbacks in my Exynos Note 9 ..everything I do is performed flawlessly.The webpage editing on the DeX, even Linux beta on DeX.
I just edited and upsampled a 2.5 minute 1080p into 4K video in less than 2 minutes while simultaneously recording it in 60fps 4K via DU recorder (to have an evidence).
I'll post it to YouTube of anyone is interested!
darkich - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
*simultaneously recording the editing process.darkich - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Also, the autonomy has been nothing short of great with an exceptionally consistent results.The device constantly gives 10h SoT (calculated).
And again, if anyone is interested I can provide link to screenshots and battery statistics.
Andrei maybe one the most knowledgeable guy about phones on the planet, but I start to question the objectivity of his overall assessments.
You diss the Exynos autonomy based just on one single battery benchmark?!?
Sorry but that's just NOT a good argument.
In real world use, the differences are negligible, even sometimes favorable to Exynos version, such as in the case of GSMArena tests where E8990 had significantly better standby efficiency and overall better result than the SD835.
cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
I actually also got 10-12h SOT and 36h on battery constantly. Without any power saving, 1400p, autobrightness, mixed wifi + some 4g - youtube, facebook, messenger, viber, samsung internet browser, some calls, listening to poweramp hifi for 1-2h and light gaming (for example epsxe running diablo 1). With heavy gaming (fortnite on ultra, vainglory on high) in long sessions around 3.5-5h I always get around 7h+ SOT.The phone is really cold, even when heavy gaming is involved + the performance is good/smooth. I wonder if sd note 9 high sustain scores in GPU are because of insane temperatures and if that's the case - this is a mistake that will fry your phone if you game a lot... as games like fortnite on ultra will cause massive overheat when played for long time even if they perform well.
Otherwise there is no logic why the note 9 exynos isn't outperforming even slightly the s9 exynos in sustain while the note 9 sd blows the s9+ sd.
najxina - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
Bought Exynos version few months back but doesnt feel like buying a flagship devicejaju123 - Monday, December 3, 2018 - link
What are you finding wrong with it?cha0z_ - Tuesday, December 4, 2018 - link
The mediocre SOC that underperforms badly compared to the sd845 and is equal and even sometimes SLOWER than the sd835 in real world performance. :)cha0z_ - Tuesday, December 4, 2018 - link
P.S. while we in Europe (and the most of the world) pay actually more for the note 9 than the buyers in USA. Perfect and fair.cha0z_ - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Excellent work and article.One question tho, why the exynos note 9 fail so bad in the GPU sustain performance? The sd845 note 9 shows great gains over the sd845 s9+ variant, why the exynos note doesn't have any gains over the exynos s9? I was expecting that both note phones will have similar benefits over the s9 respectable variants due to the better cooling?
kukuhp - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Great article Andrei, why not testing the standby drain?In my country, only available Exynos version of samsung flagship.
And i always notice exynos samsung consume more power in standby.
For example, In the same year-cpu-flagship between exynos and snapdragon, exynos will counsume at least 1% per hour in the night while i sleep, and the snapdragon about 0.3% per hour. And it will be worse in the work hour, exynos need charged in the middle of the day
cha0z_ - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
I am getting ~3% in 8-9h sleep on my exynos note 9. Not bad at all.128bit - Monday, December 10, 2018 - link
I’m using S9 plus Exyons 9810 and one plus 6 snapdragon 845, 8 gig of ram, 128GB of storage for couple of month now and noticed that snapdragon 845 good in gaming, but still has some overheating issue in heavy use, battrey life of plus still same as S9 plus Exyons, touch latency of one plus 6 in general not as good as S9 plus Exyons and noticed all snapdragon phones has some issue with touch latency including pixel 2xl.zamroni - Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - link
Conclusion: samsung should give up exynosgregoryzeng - Sunday, December 16, 2018 - link
Power consumption figures are easy, if you use the same hardware & software test tools on each tested smartphone.First charge to battery to 100 %. Then run tests via the input power source: external hardware cable, which will give accurate power use figures.
Second, use power-use software. These vary imo by brands, versions & models, so are not reliable.
I've used many in-line USB power devices; many brands, models, types, colors, etc. Only the test-laboratory-calibrated units, checked & used by professionals, will give true results.
cha0z_ - Monday, January 14, 2019 - link
The test should be redone on android pie (or atleast stated it's no longer valid). Massive scores bumps on everything regarding the exynos version atleast. pcmark is from 5200 to 6000 points overall, small bumps on the web and video category and massive bumps in the other 3 (writing, photo, data). GPU is seeing notable performance gains in every test too (guess it's mostly new drivers related) - 3dmark, antutu gpu, renderscript and so on (eager to test in real world, but if approximation is correct, I would guess around 10-14% increase depending on the workload and that's not bad at all given the poor state exynos 9810/mali g72 mp18 sits).Not sure how the snapdragon version is doing on android 9 tho, maybe it's also up (but I doubt it will be or atleast by that much as it was really optimised on oreo already).
cha0z_ - Saturday, January 19, 2019 - link
Correcting myself, web score is 6157 - a lot higher vs the android 8. :)Sad that this article was published before android 9 release. Not that it really matters+sd845 will always be the better SOC no matter what, but I am curious about the changes and to see scientific data about the current tuning as the exynos 9810 is closer to the sd845 in performance, but I think the battery took a hit even is slight.
Also the GPU is seeing 15% more fps in tests like gfx high/mid aztec, manhatan is up too, 3dmark too, antutu gpu too, everything. Really curious about the sustain performance and if it's closer to the sd this time as I feel it allows slightly higher heat. Oh, well... I understand this will never happens as it takes a lot of time and the topic is kinda old + getting absolute with new generation of phones around the corner.
The_Quantum_Guy - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
Hey Andrei, I was looking forward to buy a Note 9. So according to you is it worth it to get an imported version from U.S. to India ???