With the iPhone X release now behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to the next big flagship smartphone launch: Samsung’s Galaxy S9. After this year’s Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ were a somewhat minor update in terms of hardware design, rumor has it that Samsung is planning a more substantial visual refresh early next year when it debuts not one, not two, but three new Galaxy S9 models. It’s not clear if they’re all launching at the same time, but it looks like Samsung will debut a Galaxy S9 mini in addition to the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+.
We’ve also heard rumblings about the Galaxy S9’s specs, which are expected to be quite impressive. The stars of the show are expected to be the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset and Samsung’s new Exynos chipset built on second-generation 10nm process technology. But according to a new leak, Samsung’s best efforts with the Galaxy S9 still might not come anywhere close to measuring up to the iPhone X.
Sasmung’s flagship smartphones are always among the most powerful handsets in the world when they launch, and we expect the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ to keep that trend going. Of course, they never quite measure up to Apple’s latest iPhone models, and it appears as though that may be especially true when the new Galaxy S phones debut early next year.
New benchmark test results appeared on the Geekbench website for a Samsung smartphone with the model number SM-G960F. This model number is widely believed to be tied to the global version of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S9, which will be powered by the new Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor. And wouldn’t you know it, the Samsung SM-G960F that popped up on the Geekbench site is powered by a new octa-core Exynos chipset along with 4GB of RAM and Android 8.0.
As for the test results, they’re quite impressive. Even though this is a pre-release Galaxy S9 — assuming these benchmarks are authentic, which they likely are — the scores still place the phone among the best Android smartphones on the market right now. According to the Geekbench site, the global Galaxy S9 model scored a 2680 on the single-core Geekbench 4 test and a 7787 on the multi-core test.
Of course, there’s one problem. If these test scores are in line with what we can expect to see when the phone launches, Samsung’s latest and greatest smartphone won’t even come close to matching Apple’s iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus. It’s worth noting that early benchmark leaks are typically a good representation of what we end up seeing at launch.
Here’s how the iPhone X performs on the same tests, and the iPhone 8 and 8 PLus have even higher scores since they have lower display resolution:
Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are expected to debut as early as February next year.
