Samsung Galaxy S6 review: Subject Zero

Samsung Galaxy S6 system performance tests

With the Samsung Galaxy S6 the company went its own way, meaning it used the in-house Exynos 7420. It's the first mobile chipset to be built on a 14nm fabrication process (Snapdragon 810 is on 20nm), which should reduce power usage. That in turn reduces the dreaded thermal throttling that was a major issue in the Exynos vs. Snapdragon debate recently.

The Exynos 7420 and Snapdragon 810 are not that different in terms of processor, both use a big.LITTLE setup with four Cortex-A57 cores at 2.1GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz. The GPU is a Mali-T760 from ARM and it shares 3GB of RAM with the processor.

Update, April 3: We received a retail unit and reran the benchmarks. Some results improved slightly (noticeably the 3D graphics performance) compared to the pre-release unit we used initially.

The Galaxy S6 runs a 64-bit version of Android 5.0.2 and all eight of its cores are 64-bit capable. This is good for the future, but for now 32-bit apps run just fine - in fact, AnTuTu 5 offered both options. It returned equal scores in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes, crushing the Snapdragon opposition (805 for the Nexus 6 and Galaxy Note 4, 810 for the LG G Flex2).

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  69396
• Motorola Nexus 6
  49803
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  49273
• LG G Flex2
  47680
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  45660
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  45348

Basemark OS 2.0 tips the scales the other way and narrowly gives the win to the LG G Flex2, with the Galaxy S6 trailing by less than 5%.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  1726
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1674
• Motorola Nexus 6
  1267
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  1267
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  1176
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  1160

Looking at just the CPU performance at GeekBench 3, we see a massive advantage in multicore performance. The Snapdragon 810 runs its CPU cores a little slower (0.1GHz), but that's far too little to account for the difference. Basemark OS 2.0 confirms both the single-core and multi-core difference.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  5215
• LG G Flex2
  3604
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  3394
• Motorola Nexus 6
  3285
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  3120
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  2970

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  6306
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  6165
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  5977
• Motorola Nexus 6
  5624
• LG G Flex2
  5597
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  5557

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  26799
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  21841
• Motorola Nexus 6
  21026
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  19237
• LG G Flex2
  18856
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  18386

The Samsung Galaxy S6 has a QHD screen - 1,440 x 2,560px - which is around 80% more pixels than a 1080p screen (like the LG G Flex2 and Moto X have). Offscreen tests normalize resolution at 1080p so you can compare raw performance, while on-screen tests predict real-world gaming performance.

The Mali-T760 proved faster in general than the Adreno 430 found in the curved LG phone and even the beefy PowerVR GX6450 in the Apple iPhone 6. Depending on the graphics level playable framerates are achievable at native resolution, though more complicated graphics (like in GFX 3.0) push it well under the treshold.

Basemark X considers only off-screen results and predictably gives the win to the Galaxy S6.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  59
• LG G Flex2
  49
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  40
• Motorola Nexus 6
  38.9
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  27
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  27

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  24
• LG G Flex2
  22
• Motorola Nexus 6
  18.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  18
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  12
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  48
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  38
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  29
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  28
• Motorola Nexus 6
  27.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  26

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  14
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  13
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12
• Motorola Nexus 6
  11.9
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  11

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  27169
• Motorola Nexus 6
  20901
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  20043
• LG G Flex2
  19360
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  12190
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  11798

For web browsing performance we used the Internet app (stock web browser) as Samsung sprinkles proprietary optimization magic that's not available in Chrome or the vanilla Android browser. The Galaxy S6 wins the JavaScript race in Kraken 1.1 with a slight margin, less than we expected from the large lead in CPU performance.

For general web browsing BrowserMark 2.1 puts the Samsung flagship on par with Apple's iPhone 6 (and far ahead of the rest) despite having to render pages at QHD while the iPhone screen is barely over 720p.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  4154
• LG G Flex2
  4621
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  5181
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  5968
• Motorola Nexus 6
  6088
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  6260

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  2718
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  2232
• LG G Flex2
  2086
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  2066
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  1562
• Motorola Nexus 6
  1447

The Samsung Galaxy S6 (and S6 edge for that matter) is the fastest mobile phone you can have at the moment and with 64-bit support in place this should remain the case for some time to come. The flagship offers top notch performance for any use case and may not be surpassed in 2015, looking at just the 5" size (obviously the Note 5 is coming and should be a bit faster).

Samsung Galaxy S6 storage performance test

Samsung Galaxy S6 is the company's first flagship not to offer microSD expansion. Until the S6 and S6 edge duo all Galaxy Note and Galaxy S smartphones had memory expansion, and, in fact, it was one of the highlights of both series.

Samsung even supported moving App to SD card even when Google disabled the feature - a rarity these days. So, what happened with Samsung's love of external storage?

Well, the company came up with its own UFS 2.0 storage, which uses "Command Queue" tech (as seen in Solid State Drives) for accelerating the speed of command execution. The new technology promises 2.7x faster performance than the eMMC 5.0 memory found in the previous crop of flagships and yes, the Galaxy S6 has one.

There lies to the key to the lack of a microSD slot. If you were to put an SD card on your Galaxy S6, you'd have compromised this blazing-fast performance. This is actually true for all 2014 high-end phones, but it seems Samsung wanted users to truly feel the difference this time around and has decided on not including the storage expansion on the feature list even if it made a lot of users sad.

Let's see how fast it really is.

We ran AndroBench - a popular storage benchmark, which gauges the read and write performance of sequential and random operations. Samsung promised the new UFC 2.0 storage in Galaxy S6 and S6 edge is 2.7x faster in random read than the one used on the Galaxy S5. We found it to be even better - the Galaxy S6 did 20000+ IOPS (input-output operations per second) at random read compared to 4800 IOPS of the Galaxy S5 on the same test. That's 3.25x times better.

We also put the microSD slot to test, using the fastest microSD card we had around - a Transcend Premium 300x microSDHC UHS-1 Class 10 16GB. We tested the microSD read/write performance on both the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4. This should give you the idea of the performance drop you get when apps are accessing the microSD card instead of the fast internal storage.

The test results clearly put the Galaxy S6 on top of the sequential and random read, with massive lead over the competition. It was also the champ in random read and write operations with small variations between it and the Galaxy S6 edge.

And before you ask, all tested devices were on Android Lollipop. Also all tests were ran with h/w encryption turned off - which is the default setting under Android Lollipop.

Update, April 3: We retested the storage with the retail unit we received. The pre-release unit had some issues with sequential write speeds, which have been resolved in the retail unit.

Sequential Read, MB/s

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  321.44
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  311.05
• LG G3
  239.68
• HTC One M9
  239.19
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4
  212.45
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  206.85

Sequential Write, MB/s

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  145.19
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  139.20
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4
  126.69
• HTC One M9
  123.97
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  56.31
• LG G3
  39.53

Random Read, MB/s

MB/s, Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  77.58
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  76.79
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4
  22.10
• LG G3
  21.81
• HTC One M9
  20.27
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  18.79

Random Write, MB/s

MB/s, Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  20.20
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  19.76
• HTC One M9
  13.93
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4
  10.71
• LG G3
  9.42
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  6.91

The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge (and S6 for that matter) is the fastest mobile phone you can have at the moment and with 64-bit support in place this should remain the case for some time to come. The flagship offers top notch performance for any use case and may not be surpassed in 2015, looking at just the 5" size (obviously the Note 5 is coming and should be a bit faster).

Cloud storage can be just as effective for backups - being equally seamless when running in the background. And you do get 115GB worth of free OneDrive storage with each Galaxy S6, so that's a start, isn't it?