Galaxy S9 versus Galaxy S9

Galaxy S9+. © Samsung.

It seems that Samsung is having difficulties with its own processors. You may not know it, but the manufacturer uses a different system-on-a-chip on its high-end phones depending on the regions of the globe: for the most part, American, Chinese, Japanese and Latin-American users get devices equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, while the rest of the world gets a “house” Exynos SOC (that's why the name of the processor is not mentioned in the however exhaustive technical sheet on the global site). As a result, two Galaxy S9s, which to all outward appearances are identical, can have vastly different performances. Anandtech has compared two S9s (S9 et S9+), one with a Snapdragon 845 and the other with a Exynos 9810, and the results aren’t so hot for Samsung: in almost all the tests, the Exynos lags far behind the Snapdragon.

⇨ AnandTech, “The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Review: Exynos and Snapdragon at 960fps.”