Right now, depending on your region, there are 2 versions of both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge floating around in the world — the model powered by Samsung’s latest Exynos8890 processor, and the Qualcomm version using the new Snapdragon 820. While Samsung would like you to believe that performance, battery life, and all that relevant stuff are mostly the same on either variant, we’re starting to see evidence that this might not be the case.
In a new video from PhoneBuff, David Rahimi pits the 2 versions of the Galaxy S7 Edge against each other in a speed test. He does this by opening the same apps on both devices, returning to these sames apps in a 2nd round to see how well they manage RAM. While they initially opened up most apps within milliseconds of each other (the Exynos was always slightly quicker, however), we were surprised to see just how much better the Exynos model was at managing RAM. During the second lap, the Exynos model pulled just about every single app out of RAM, while the Snapdragon variant had to reopen many of the same apps, costing it valuable time.
Lap 1
Lap 2
Don’t forget that both models feature exactly the same hardware — with the exception of their processors, of course — so even though this isn’t the most scientific of tests, it was a great way to see the differences in real world performance between the two. Had the performed within 2 even 3 seconds of each other, we still would have chalked this up as a tie. But a 40 second difference (mostly in the 2nd lap)? It’s easy to see one phone is much better at managing RAM than the other. With the Exynos model said to feature better battery life, faster real-world speed, root, better slow-mo video, and less bloatware — we’re starting to wonder if US Galaxy S7 owners ended up with the short end of the stick.