Samsung S8+ Benchmark Results Vs iPhone: Octa-core Vs Quadcore Faceoff

Is the Samsung Galaxy S8+’s octa-core chip better than the Apple iPhone’s quad-core chip? Benchmark results reveal the upcoming smartphone’s power.

The battle of the cores has been a long-standing and heated debate, more so in the past few months as Octa-core devices started to enter the scene. Samsung has always been at the forefront of the Octa-core battle, having advertised and marketed their first Octa-core weapon in 2013 in the body of the Samsung Galaxy S4.

With more and more octa-core smartphones entering the scene, the question is, is an octa-core smartphone really better than a quad-core smartphone? To put things into perspective, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8+ (The S8+ is the internet’s term for the Galaxy S8 with the bigger screen, which, of course, could still get a different name by launch) will be another octa-core beast that will release this year. But will it be better than the Apple iPhone, which only runs with a quad-core chip?

Mashable reported earlier that the first benchmark reports for the Samsung Galaxy S8+ has already made its way online via Geekbench and it is already stirring a bit of controversy.

Geekbench published this week the first benchmark report for the Samsung SM-G955U, the model that is believed to ship as the Samsung Galaxy S8+, and we’ve got the benchmark scores that are making consumers wary if it’s worth investing into octa-core after all.

According to the results, the single-core score for the Samsung Galaxy S8+ clocks in at 1929, while the multi-core score puts it at 6084. For the average consumer, these are all just numbers, well until we put the Samsung S8+ scores beside the other latest smartphones on the market.

We have yet to receive benchmark results for the upcoming iPhone 8 (but that’s one crazy guarded secret by Apple anyway) so we compare the upcoming Galaxy S8+ with its predecessor, the premium Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, and its older competitor, the Apple iPhone 7 Plus.

In comparison with its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which runs on an octa-core processor as well, you’ll notice significant upgrades as the Samsung Galaxy S7 only scored an 1893 single-core, and 5670 multi-core.

However, if you check the benchmark results for the iPhone 7 Plus, you’ll get an average single-core score of 3469, which is almost twice the single core power of the Samsung Galaxy S8+. On the multi-core score, however, it gets trumped by the Galaxy S8, only scoring around 5752.

Understanding how cores work is a nasty job, which Trusted Reviews tried to explain in this one article. But without getting too geeky about it, for the casual tech consumer, multi-core score usually would you give you a better understanding of how powerful a smartphone could be in real world application.

Essentially, smartphones utilize multi-cores so that the phone will be able to process more work more efficiently. This means that instead of loading all the work into a single core, the smartphone divides all the work into its cores so that it gets done quicker. This is why even though some like Mens XP would regard the Samsung Galaxy S8+’s single-core score to be a reason to doubt the upcoming device, it shouldn’t really be the case.

A good single-core score for the Apple iPhone 7 Plus, as reflected on Geekbench, couldn’t off-the-bat outshine the Samsung Galaxy S8’s single-core score since in the real computing world, most apps and systems would usually make use of the multiple cores, instead of dumping all the work into one core. This means that the Galaxy S8+’s multi-core score would reflect that it will be able to handle computing better and more efficiently (technically) since the way the S8+ uses its multiple cores outshines the way the iPhone 7 would use its cores. How this translates to actual computing and work could still vary, however.

And if we’re talking quad-cores and octa-cores already, since the Apple iPhone 7 Plus uses a quad-core processor, while the Samsung Galaxy S8+ uses an octa-core processor, it doesn’t necessarily follow that octa-core is better since it has more cores. In fact, as Make Us Of tries to explain, most octa-core smartphones are essentially dual quad-cores at most. This means that it uses two separate quad-core sets, where one quad-core set is more powerful than the other.

Why use two quad-core sets, you ask? Well, the very basic way to understand is that the smartphone would delegate a set of task to the quad-core set that is most fitted for the job. If the work that needs to be completed by the smartphone, for example, only needs low power, for example messaging or just browsing your phone, the task(s) will be delegated to the lower-power quad-core set. If you need more power, i.e. gaming or HD video-viewing, then that task(s) will be delegated to the higher power quad-core set. The catch is that you get to prolong your battery life since the smartphone doesn’t need to make the more powerful quad-core set work, which uses more battery power when you just need this level of power to accomplish a certain task.

In fact, if you compare some octa-core smartphones to the iPhone 7 Plus’ quad-core score, you’ll be surprised at how better the quad-core iPhone 7 Plus could perform against the octa-core. The Xiaomi Redmi 3s, for example, is an octa-core device, but can only clock in a 1672 multi-core score. The Huawei Honor 8, which is another octa-core device, only performs almost as well as the iPhone 7 Plus, achieving a multi-core score of 5471.

In theory, based on how cores work and benchmark results, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8+ could easily outmaneuver the Apple iPhone 7 Plus. But, of course, we can’t say just yet that the Samsung Galaxy S8 could win this year’s battle of the smartphones since the upcoming Apple iPhone 8, which will be powered with a better processor, could be another story.

If reports as Gadgets360‘s could be true, then we could see the power of the Samsung Galaxy S8+ with our own eyes and hands by March 29 during the scheduled “Galaxy Unpacked” event.

I think this is what you’ve been waiting for. pic.twitter.com/FvYfsLOy0R

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 1, 2017

[Featured Image by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Samsung]