System Performance Revisited

Now that we’ve covered battery life we can revisit another topic where our testing has changed dramatically for 2016, which is our system performance benchmarks. As previously mentioned this year a major goal of ours was to focus on benchmarks with metrics that better indicate user experience rather than being subject to additional layers of indirection in addition to updating our previously used benchmarks. Probably one of the hardest problems to tackle from a testing perspective is capturing what it means to have a smooth and fast phone, and with the right benchmarks you can actually start to test for these things in a meaningful way instead of just relying on a reviewer’s word. In addition to new benchmarks, we’ve attempted to update existing types of benchmarks with tests that are more realistic and more useful rather than simple microbenchmarks that can be easily optimized against without any meaningful user experience improvements. As the Galaxy S7 edge is identical in performance to the Galaxy S7, scores for the Galaxy S7 edge are excluded for clarity.

JetStream 1.1

Kraken 1.1 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

WebXPRT 2015 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

In browser/JavaScript performance the Galaxy S7 in its Snapdragon 820 variants performs pretty much as you'd expect with fairly respectable performance about on par with the iPhone 6 at least part of the time, which frankly still isn't enough but a lot of this is more due to Google's lack of optimization in Chrome than anything else. The Exynos 8890 version comes a lot closer but it still isn't great. Subjectively browsing performance on the Galaxy S7 with the Snapdragon 820 is still painful with Chrome, and I have to install either a variant of Snapdragon Browser or Samsung's stock browser in order to get remotely acceptable performance. Even then, performance isn't great when compared to Apple's A9-equipped devices. The lack of single thread performance relative to other devices on the market in conjunction with poor software optimization on the part of Google is really what continues to hold OEMs back here rather than anything that Samsung Mobile is capable of resolving.

PCMark - Work Performance Overall

PCMark - Web Browsing

PCMark - Video Playback

PCMark - Writing

PCMark - Photo Editing

PCMark shows that the Galaxy S7 is generally well-optimized, with good performance in native Android APIs, although devices like the OnePlus 3 pull ahead in general, likely due to differences in DVFS, lower display resolution, more RAM, and similar changes as the hardware is otherwise quite similar. In general though unless you get something with a Kirin 95x in it you aren't going to get performance much better than what you find in the Galaxy S7, although the software optimization in cases like the writing test could be better for the Snapdragon 820 version of the phone.

DiscoMark - Android startActivity() Cold Runtimes

DiscoMark - Android startActivity() Hot Runtimes

As hinted by the PCMark results, the Galaxy S7 with the Snapdragon 820 is really nothing to write home about when it comes to actual software optimizations, while the Exynos 8890 version is significantly faster in comparison. The fastest devices by far here are still the Kirin 950-equipped phones, but even from cold start launches the HTC 10 is comparable, and pulls ahead slightly when the applications are pre-loaded into memory. The OnePlus 3 and Xiaomi Mi5 are closer to what the S820 GS7 should be achieving, which is really more a testament to just how strangely slow the Galaxy S7 with Snapdragon 820 is.

Overall though, the Galaxy S7 in both iterations are acceptably fast for general purpose tasks. However, with that said the Snapdragon 820 variant is noticeably slower, and the software stack seems to be less optimized for whatever reason even after multiple post-launch OTAs and all the latest app updates. Given that these devices have locked bootloaders it's difficult to really go deep and try to figure out exactly what's causing these issues, but it's likely that Samsung Mobile has the engineering staff to do this and resolve these issues as a 600 USD phone really shouldn't be performing worse than a 400 USD phone. On the bright side, the Exynos 8890 variants perform quite well here, with performance comparable to top devices and often beating out Snapdragon 820 devices, although usually not by a huge margin.

Introduction and Battery Life Revisited System Performance Cont'd
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  • sevenmack - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link

    Not for me and not for many people who buy phones on contract. My two-year contracts usually end in October, months after many phones are released. Knowing how well phones are peforming out of the box matters no matter when they come out. So the review is timely for many of us out there.

    Additionally, as I have experienced latelywith two LG G4s dying bcause of motherboard issues, you may find yourself in the market for a new phone at an unexpected time. Again, the review is timely for me and for other people.

    Finally: Testing a phone properly takes time. The reality is that the reason that so many other outlets released their reviews so quickly is because they aren't doing much of anything to put the phones through the paces. The average smartphone review is shallow, superficial and uttlerly devoid of objective data.

    Anandtech does it differently -- and I appreciate that. You may not. That's your problem and you can take your eyeballs elsewhere.
  • virtuastro - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link

    Front Camera Aperture Size is F/1.7 not F/2.2. Might be typo. Or maybe is it on international phone? Anyway not bad review but I still keep my GS6 for great camera at low-light no pixels issue just a bit over-saturated but it can be do quick editing.
  • hans_ober - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link

    No Soc /Exynos deep-dive?
  • JoshHo - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link

    It should be coming but I'm not sure when Andrei will finish it.
  • Mark W 52 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link


    Read this article about these two phones, your conclusions and characterized poor battery of the Nexus 6P is definitionally NOT CONSISTENT with the findings of this other write up.

    http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s7-ed...
  • Mark W 52 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link

    I would definitely rather have and recommend a "pure vanilla Android experience" over the bloated touch wiz skin that Samsung puts on their phones. I had an old S3, and had to drop it over two years ago when it couldn't be updated and got stuck on 4.3 Android. Samsung and T-MOBILE could not agree on the terms and conditions even though Google told me that the the phone could have gone to 4.42. And, Samsung takes forever to update their devices. On the other hand, updates from Google have recently been monthly. Big difference,. I'm sticking with Google phones from now on.
  • fanofanand - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link

    The monthly updates are security updates. Important, no doubt, but they are not OS updates. I would never buy a non-Nexus phone because I value the security updates as well as the OS updates, but don't be confused on what is being updated.
  • erple2 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link

    True, but the security updates are actually the important ones. OS updates are nice and all, but the reason I've been nexus only since the Nexus 4 is for security updates.
  • InspectHerGadget - Sunday, July 31, 2016 - link

    I agree. I think waiting for the latest OS update is frustrating. The fragmentation of Android is a major issue especially if you are waiting for a bug fix. I had one on my Note 5 on the photo app where it went into the digital zoom rather than taking the photo. I had to close then reopen the camera app before I could take the photo. It did this only occasionally but often enough just the same.
  • pav1 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link

    This review is too late. Too darn late, to be precise. I bought the s7 for the camera and am disappointed.

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