【Kalakal (2025)】

The Kalakal (2025)pieces of the Galaxy S8 puzzle are finally coming together.

We're already pretty sure this is what Samsung's Galaxy S8 will look like when it's announced on March 29, and now we may know how fast it'll be.

Though it shouldn't be taken as representative of the final shipping version, the first benchmarks for the Galaxy S8+ (that's the one with the larger screen) have reportedly been logged into Geekbench, a popular tool for benchmarking a device's processor and memory.

By themselves, the scores are meaningless. But when compared with the iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel XL and the Galaxy S7/S7 Edge/Galaxy Note 7 (RIP), we can get an idea of just how much more performance to expect (or not expect).

According to the Geekbench tests, the Galaxy S8+ (SM-G955U) and its Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip scored a 1,929 on the single-core test and a 6,084 on the multi-core test. It bests out the Galaxy S7 and its Snapdragon 820 chip, which is the the current top-performing Android phone with a 1,786 single-core and 5,210 multi-core score.

The Pixel XL's got a slightly faster Snapdragon 821 chip than the S7/S7 Edge, but it fares worse than the S7 and S8+ with a 1,577 single-core and 4,020 multi-core scores.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, however, are a different story. With scores of 3,295 and 3,305, respectively, the iPhone 7/7 Plus's A10 Fusion chip blows the S8+ out of the water on the single-core test. The only test the S8+ seems to beat -- again, assuming the tests are accurate and the performance isn't throttled before its launch -- the iPhone 7/7 Plus is on the multi-core test: 6,084 versus 5,406 (iPhone 7 Plus) and 5,382 (iPhone 7).

If you're looking at all these numbers and wondering what the hell they mean and whether or not any of it matters...the answer is yes and no.

Without getting too nerdy, the single-core score tells you how fast a device is able to perform one task at a time and the multi-core score tells you how well it's able to juggle multiple tasks at a time.

While this technically means the iPhone 7 might be faster than the S8+, apps that use multiple cores, like 3D games, should run smoother on the S8+. Multitasking should also be faster on the S8+.

That said, of coursethe S8+ will be faster than the S7. Benchmark scores are a good synthetic way to see how a phone stacks up against others, but real life usage (i.e. how good the cameras are, sound quality, etc.) matters more and these numbers won't tell you anything about that stuff.