Not all Galaxy S8 smartphones are created equal. As with the Galaxy S7 before it, there are two versions of the Galaxy S8: one for the US and one for the international market. The key difference between the two phones is that the US version comes equipped with Qualcomm’s 10nm Snapdragon 835 chipset while the international version features Samsung’s 10nm Exynos 8895 processor.
There isn’t a huge gulf between the two chips, but benchmark tests have shown that the Exynos CPU is indisputably faster than the Qualcomm component. But how much of a difference does it make?
The PhoneBuff YouTube channel had the same question, so in order to see whether or not the international Galaxy S8 variant is noticeably faster than the US variant, they performed a test in which 16 apps were opened and given a chance to load on each phone before flipping the script and opening the apps once again in reverse order to test the RAM management of each chipset:
While the Exynos variant had a marginal lead at the end of the first lap, the final times of each phone were separated by less than three seconds. The tester says that this is within his margin of error, which means the Exynos and Qualcomm Galaxy S8 smartphones basically tied.
That’s not to say that the Exynos processor isn’t faster than Qualcomm’s, but unless you’re a power user constantly pushing your phone to the limit, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference between the two. So keep this video comparison in mind before you rush out and buy an international model.
