As Apple prepares to unveil the new iPhone 7, Samsung has done all it can to steal the spotlight with its new Galaxy Note 7 phablet.
The phone is beautifully designed, comes with the same class-leading camera as the Galaxy S7, and features the best hardware available.
And while we’ve had all manner of benchmarking results for the Note already, the guys over at PhoneBuff have decided to try out a more novel approach to testing the speed of Samsung’s handset.
In the video below, the Note is put up against Apple’s iPhone 6S from last year, as someone furiously opens and closes apps to test the real-world speed of both phones.
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And as you can see, the Note 7 doesn’t fare too well in this somewhat tenuous test, despite having the benefit of an extra year’s worth of smartphone innovation behind it.
But, as our Mobile Editor Max Parker explains, the validity of such results is somewhat questionable: “
“The Note 7 is a fast phone, the iPhone 6S is a fast phone. Every 2016 flaghship is fast.”
It should be said that Apple’s handsets consistently perform well in the past when it comes to performance, but it’s strange that the testers in this case didn’t put the Note up against the similarly proportioned iPhone 6S Plus – though this would be unlikely to make any difference in terms of performance.
It’s worth noting that in our benchmarking tests, the iPhone 6S Plus had some comparable results to the Note 7.
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In the Geekbench single core test, the Note 7 scored 2,118 while the iPhone came in at 2,465 – a better result, but only slightly.
In the multicore test, however, Apple’s device scored 4,417 while Samsung’s rival managed a score of 5.942.
In that sense then, there really shouldn’t be much difference between the two handsets in terms of day to day use, which makes the PhoneBuffs’ test that much more intriguing.
A recent performance review from xda-developers seems to back up the Buffs’ findings, concluding that the Note 7 delivers “embarrassing real-world performance”.
The xda team’s test was a lot more in-depth, too – comparing performance with other top-end Android handsets and suggesting that, with all the high-end hardware that went into the Note 7, “something went wrong with Samsung’s implementation”.
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Alongside an Octa-core CPU, the Note 7 packs 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. In comparison, the iPhone 6S comes with Apple’s dual-core A9 processor and 2GB RAM.
Despite these findings, however, there’s simply no doubting you’ll get speedy performance from the Note 7 – something we can verify now that we’ve reviewed the phone in full.
WATCH: Galaxy Note 7 review
What do you make of these tests? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
