Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9: Dressed to kill

Performance

Samsung is a conglomerate of many companies, one of which happens to make smartphone chipsets. So why then did the Galaxy S4 and S5 along with the Galaxy Note 3 and Note 4 use a Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm? And more importantly, why did Samsung switch back to its own supply?

Both the Exynos 7420 that's used in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Snapdragon 810 inside the HTC One M9 use CPU cores designed by ARM. Four powerful Cortex-A57 cores are balanced with four low-power Cortex-A53 cores, those can be mixed and matched to fit the current workload. They are 64-bit capable too and the two flagships run a 64-bit version of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

The thing is, Samsung has a superior manufacturing capability - its chips are made at 14nm, while the TSMC-manufactured Snapdragon chips are at 20nm. This let Samsung clock its chipset 100MHz higher for both types of cores and keeps the heat in check. Note that both phones can warm up, but under heavy stress the HTC One M9 gets noticeably hotter.

Update, April 3: we re-ran the benchmarks on a retail Galaxy S6 unit and it showed better 3D performance compared to the pre-release unit we used initially.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 wins in both single and multi-core performance, confirmed by Geekbench 3 and Basemark OS II 2.0. Since the cores are identical the difference comes from the actual clockspeed - manufacturers advertise the maximum speed, but the chipsets in their phones rarely hit that mark, especially with multiple cores running.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  5215
• HTC One M9
  3761

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  6306
• HTC One M9
  4688

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  26799
• HTC One M9
  18047

Overall system performance also goes in favor of the Galaxy S6, by a small margin in Basemark X and a bigger margin in AnTuTu. Both phones come equipped with 3GB of RAM, we'll test the storage performance separately in a minute.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1674
• HTC One M9
  1365

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  69396
• HTC One M9
  51427

While the CPUs come from the same designer, the GPUs are quite different. Samsung is all-in on ARM designs and uses a Mali-T760. It has a tough job ahead of it since it has to render graphics at 1,440 x 2,560px resolution. The HTC One M9's and Qualcomm's Adreno 430 have to work at 1,080 x 1,920px, that's close to half the number of pixels.

The HTC One M9 comes out ahead when the graphic benchmarks are set to render at native screen resolution with a score about 50% higher. Depending on the level of graphics the Galaxy S6 can turn in playable framerates - 38fps in GFX Bench 2.7 - but the more advanced of GFX 3.0 are too much.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  50
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  38

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  16

Game makers have the option to render graphics internally at 1080p and upscale as needed. That's covered by the 1080p offscreen tests. All three tests show an advantage for the Galaxy S6 and Mali-T760 over the One M9 and Adreno 430.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  59
• HTC One M9
  49

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  24
• HTC One M9
  23

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  27169
• HTC One M9
  19848

For web browsing, we used the Samsung-tuned Internet app on the Galaxy S6 and the Chrome app on the HTC One M9 (it's the only browser available out of the box).

Kraken 1.1 shows the Galaxy S6's CPU performance advantage extends to faster JavaScript. The general web test, BorwserMark 2.1, shows a nearly double advantage. That's with rendering pages at QHD resolution too.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  4154
• HTC One M9
  5500

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  2718
• HTC One M9
  1681

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S6. A slightly faster processor improves performance for apps and web pages. Poorly written 3D games can have issues with the QHD resolution, but the rest can adjust the ratio resolution/quality to their liking (it's what most games on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One do). At equal resolution, the S6 GPU has more performance to offer.

The HTC One M9 proved itself a capable opponent, but it doesn't deliver the best performance on Android, which is a negative for a flagship.

Storage performance

Samsung is one of the biggest manufacturers of memory chips and is quite proud of its new UFS 2.0 storage standard. In fact, with the Galaxy S6 it was so focused on speed that it removed the slower microSD card slot altogether.

HTC kept the microSD card slot it introduced with the HTC One (M8). We've recorded 2160p videos on microSD cards before so we don't think this task should be an issue.

We stuck a UHS-I card in the HTC One M9 and tested its performance too to illustrate the difference between internal and external storage performance.

Reads and writes come in two forms - sequential (e.g. playing or recording a video) and random (e.g. an app fetching various resources from storage). For sequential read the Samsung Galaxy S6 has a massive advantage over the HTC One M9. For writes, however, the advantage is smaller.

Update, April 3: we retested the storage on a retail Galaxy S6. The pre-release unit we used initially had some issues with sequential reads, but they weren't present in the retail unit.

Sequential Read, MB/s

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  311.05
• HTC One M9
  239.19
• HTC One M9 microSD
  48.16

Sequential Write, MB/s

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  139.20
• HTC One M9
  123.97
• HTC One M9 microSD
  8.47

Random reads and writes are much slower than sequential ones (this is true even for solid state drives in computers). The HTC One M9 again lags behind when it comes to reads, the Galaxy S6 is nearly four times faster here. Writes are more balanced, but Galaxy S6's advantage is far from negligible, around 50%.

Random Read, MB/s

MB/s, Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  77.58
• HTC One M9
  20.27
• HTC One M9 microSD
  7.37

Random Write, MB/s

MB/s, Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  19.76
• HTC One M9
  13.93
• HTC One M9 microSD
  0.59

Winner: It depends. For raw speed, the Galaxy S6 is clearly the winner. The decision to leave out the memory expansion port rubbed many the wrong way though. True, there are 64GB and 128GB versions, but those upgrades are pricier than the equivalent microSD card, even a fast UHS-I card.

The HTC One M9 comes only in a 32GB variety, but you can add hundreds more with the right microSD card. It will be slow, but our experience shows cards are fast enough for 2160p video. You probably won't need more than 32GB for apps either.