Samsung Galaxy S9 Breaks Cover In Geekbench With Benchmark Busting Snapdragon 845

Are today's flagship smartphones fast enough? Have we reached the point of diminishing returns on processor upgrades? Who cares! As geeks and power users, one of the things we look forward to most with each new flagship phone launch is the performance bump that comes with it. That will again be the case when Samsung launches its Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, as evidenced by some early benchmarks that popped up in Geekbench's database.

Listed as "Samsung SM-G965UI," the new entry points to a Galaxy S9+ handset with an 8-core Qualcomm processor, presumably the Snapdragon 845 that we already know will be used in Samsung's next batch of Galaxy handsets, at least in the United. In the overseas model, Samsung is likely to stick with its own Exynos hardware, as it typically does. The Geekbench listing, however, clearly states this is a Qualcomm part.

Here's a look:


In the above benchmark run, the Galaxy S9+ scored 2,422 in the single-core test and 8,351 in the multi-core portion. Those scores are remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, no other Samsung phone has ever cross the 2,000 threshold in Geekbench's single-core test. And secondly, the multi-core score is also a new record for Samsung. So in its own right, the Galaxy S9+ powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC looks to be blazing fast phone.

How does it compare to other devices? We happen to have a robust collection of scores, the most recent of which were graphed in our review of Google's Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Let's have a gander:


Looking at our own collection of benchmarks, the Galaxy S9+'s single-core score is right up there with the fastest performing phones (in Geekbench), save for the iPhone 7, which is in class all its own in this test. And in the multi-core portion of the benchmark, the Galaxy S9+ scored around 1,700 points higher, creating a not insignificant gap between itself and the next highest score produced by the Moto Z2 Force. Of course, we haven't spent any hands-on time with the Galaxy S9+ and did not run the test ourselves, but if the early benchmark run holds true, it's an impressive score that hints at class leading performance, at least among Android devices.

We don't have our own scores for Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone X to compare with, both of which run off a custom A11 Bionic processor. However, a digging through Geekbench's database we see the iPhone X consistently scoring above 4,000 in the single-core test and over 10,000 in the multi-core test.

It doesn't look like Samsung's next generation Galaxy phones will close the gap, at least in Geekbench. However, it does look to be an extremely fast phone in its own right.