Lucky China gets the best version of the Note7 with Exynos / 128gb / 6gb RAM. Waiting for a review on that one next month. Americans got shortchanged again like what happened with the S7 edge.
Overrated Note7 camera?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/...than-far-cheaper-chinese-phones/#72ee63146de2
Questionable battery life (SD820)?
http://m.scmp.com/lifestyle/article...7-sexy-stylish-and-feature-laden-questionable
Exynos 8890 superior to Snapdragon 820...
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ories.html?_ga=1.87570591.68909991.1466599410
Exynos is Samsung's own ARM fabrication SoC. So, why is it still sourcing from what must be a more expensive Qualcomm? I have no idea but these benchmarks suggest that Exynos is the more powerful choice in the categories that matter to most people (browsing and keeping apps in memory).
This first manual benchmarking of the two shows that the Exynos is about 10% faster in opening apps but is a whopping 33% faster in re-opening apps that should have been kept in memory but in the case of Snapdragon, they were not. Strange since both systems have the same amount of RAM.
Samsung Galaxy S7: Exynos 8890 vs. Snapdragon 820 speed test - GSMArena.com news
This other site with a set of benchmarks shows that in the categories where the Snapdragon bests the Exynos, it does so by no more than 10% (mostly on graphics) but with the browser focused benchmarks the Exynos is better by 33% (Vellamo browser) and nearly DOUBLE the performance in the javascript centric "Sunspider" benchmark.
Samsung Galaxy S7: Snapdragon 820 vs Exynos 8890 flavors compared
On this last site, which is the least damning, you'll still find that the categories in which the Snapdragon bests the Exynos, it does so by about 10% but the categories where the Exynos is the better performer (GeekBench 3 multi-core & Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal) it is better by 20%!
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_gala...iew-1409p6.php
These were not cherry picked sites but rather the first three benchmarks I found after researching this. I spend a good deal of time browsing web news articles on my phone and switching rapidly between apps.
Therefore, it is distressing to me that the Exynos, which performs up to 33% faster at these tasks, is not available to people in the US and especially not to people like me who are with a CDMA carrier. The Exynos must be cheaper for Samsung to produce than it is for them to purchase from Qualcomm so why restrict their largest markets (US, China, Japan) from using the cheaper, superior performing product?
http://m.androidcentral.com/note-7-head-head-exynos-vs-snapdragon-benchmarks
http://www.xda-developers.com/with-...delivers-embarrassing-real-world-performance/
We are bringing this to light because we see that, once again, Samsung’s flagships are getting generally-positive reviews for their performance, while users often disagree. We talked about this issue in an article earlier this year where we mentioned TouchWiz lag, how present it was in 2015 devices, and how we wished for it to change.
At XDA, we take performance very seriously, and it’s often one of our paramount priorities. So much in fact, that many of the Galaxy phone users in our forums have preferred AOSP ROMs over TouchWiz for years, sacrificing the stellar camera and often-useful features that Samsung packs into its ROM, just to get rid of infamous lag that the Galaxy phones traditionally ship with. And we’ve noticed that despite the media outlets’ comments about Samsung’s above-average performance year after year — like we often see, those comments might change a month or two down the line, and what’s considered ‘fluid and smooth’ in one review can then ‘slow down to a crawl’ after a matter of days. Not out of malice nor ineptitude, but short review periods often don’t allow journalists to uncover the true face of Samsung’s software.
This is important to us because we are also enthusiasts, and we’ve seen reviews ignore, year after year, clear, delimited, replicable and often universal performance issues with Samsung phones, such as the infamous home button delay of the Galaxy Note 3, the always-delayed multi-tasking menu of the Galaxy Note 4, or the terrible memory management of the Galaxy Note 5 (which is still an issue on the Note 7, by the way). It’s important that we recognize that these issues exist so that consumers can make educated choices. We are putting this out there not to shame Samsung, or any particular media outlet, but so that people know that despite 6 years worth of releases, Samsung still has horrendous issues with software.
Most importantly, we don’t think the lack of reports on these issues come due to malice, nor from cronyism.
But many of these problems can be fixed — they probably will be, as we’ve noted multiple times throughout the past year that Samsung updates have done a good job at improving performance or battery life. And to make ourselves heard and ensure they do, we must acknowledge they exist and put Samsung on the spot as well, because when phones that are half the price run laps around Samsung’s latest big thing, we can seriously ask for more for our buck.
^ This Snapdragon 820 variant is very concerning although I did say software is more correctable. Going to import the Exynos 8890 / 128gb / 6gb RAM variant and will likely get taxed heavily for it. If you're going to pay top dollar, you better try getting the best hardware too. Even if the Exynos' battery life is 15% better and not 30% like the S7 edge models, that's still a difference since the battery is non-removable and you have to live with it. I guess every little thing counts. Samsung don't care about us Americans people! Exynos 8890 is the only way to roll with a Note7.
