Samsung smartphones have always been known for the features they pack apart from the stellar display quality. The Infinity display on the Galaxy S9 is probably the best in the industry with punchy colours and an insane resolution.
However what Samsung phones aren’t known for is the performance. They tend to slow down over time and this is mainly attributed to “Samsung Experience”(formerly known as TouchWiz), which is Samsung’s custom skin on top of Android. While Samsung has cut down on bloat in recent times, it doesn’t seem to help much.
In a test performed by C4ETech, a popular Tech YouTube Channel with more than 1Million subscribers, the Galaxy S9 Plus and the OnePlus 5T are made to open the same set of apps and the time taken is recorded. The OnePlus 5T runs on “Oxygen OS” which is very close to Stock Android. It is worthy to note that the OnePlus 5T is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC, a chipset from last year while the S9 sports the newer and more powerful Exynos 9810.
The test reveals that the OnePlus 5T is faster in both light usage and heavy usage scenarios. In the light usage test, the 5T finishes 10 seconds ahead of the S9 at 54 seconds. In the second round with heavy duty apps and games, the 5T again defeats the Samsung flagship by completing both the performance and the memory management rounds in just 1:58 minutes. The S9 takes 17 seconds more and completes the test in 2:15 minutes. Both smartphones have no issues in memory management and keep all apps in memory.
It is quite apparent that this is due to the bulkier UI on the Samsung device. While speed is not the only factor when choosing a smartphone, it is disappointing to see that the S9 has lost by a big margin considering that it is the newer phone and sports an improved SoC.
We love Samsung phones for various reasons and the Samsung Galaxy S9 is undoubtedly the better phone of the two. However, performance and and optimisation is something Samsung has to look into sooner than later.
