I remember the days where Samsung phones were knackered for having sluggish out-of-box performance that only got worse and worse over time. I very much remember my old Galaxy S3, which ran quite well when out-of-the-box but had some hitches and stutters. Eventually, that got worse until it was nearly unusable with the Android 4.3 update.
My experience with last year's Note7 was significantly better, but also not perfect. It is snappier, but still tends to hitch and stutter, especially when scrolling. It's not what I'd call "slow", but it's also not smooth either.
After experiencing phones with snappy UIs like the HTC One M7, Moto Z and a Nexus 6P, I was expecting the usual Samsung jank when I unboxed my Note8 and powered it on for the very first time.
But then, I noticed something....or rather, the lack of something.
It didn't hitch or lag, even while installing apps in the background. Scrolling was consistently smooth for the most part and it also seems that Samsung has tuned their memory management to make proper use of all that memory, so I would say that the increased UX performance is down to better software optimization, not the extra RAM. This is a slight exaggeration, but it actually does feel similar in responsiveness and fluidity to what I would expect from a phone running close-to-stock Android. I really was not expecting this.
Just over a month later, and another thing hit me; It hasn't slowed down....yet.
Right about a month is when I'd notice stuff going amiss when it came to performance, but so far, it seems to maintain its snappy nature, even when the processor is pegged back in power saving mode. Apps still load very quickly, are well-kept in memory and stuttering plus hitching didn't occur frequently.
I'm really honestly astounded. I would have never expected a Samsung phone with a heavy skin to perform extremely well so far, especially given my prior experience with an S8+ being less-than-ideal. Of course, an OS upgrade can probably just ruin the whole thing, but let's hope not.
My experience with last year's Note7 was significantly better, but also not perfect. It is snappier, but still tends to hitch and stutter, especially when scrolling. It's not what I'd call "slow", but it's also not smooth either.
After experiencing phones with snappy UIs like the HTC One M7, Moto Z and a Nexus 6P, I was expecting the usual Samsung jank when I unboxed my Note8 and powered it on for the very first time.
But then, I noticed something....or rather, the lack of something.
It didn't hitch or lag, even while installing apps in the background. Scrolling was consistently smooth for the most part and it also seems that Samsung has tuned their memory management to make proper use of all that memory, so I would say that the increased UX performance is down to better software optimization, not the extra RAM. This is a slight exaggeration, but it actually does feel similar in responsiveness and fluidity to what I would expect from a phone running close-to-stock Android. I really was not expecting this.
Just over a month later, and another thing hit me; It hasn't slowed down....yet.
Right about a month is when I'd notice stuff going amiss when it came to performance, but so far, it seems to maintain its snappy nature, even when the processor is pegged back in power saving mode. Apps still load very quickly, are well-kept in memory and stuttering plus hitching didn't occur frequently.
I'm really honestly astounded. I would have never expected a Samsung phone with a heavy skin to perform extremely well so far, especially given my prior experience with an S8+ being less-than-ideal. Of course, an OS upgrade can probably just ruin the whole thing, but let's hope not.