Samsung Galaxy Note 7 benchmarks: we ran a few on the test unit, it's still a beast

So, the Galaxy Note 7 was announced yesterday and, in a cool twist, at the end of the event Samsung quickly transformed the stage where DJ Koh was standing just 40 minutes earlier into a media test area, where we got to play with the cool new toys. Of course, after taking some quick snaps of the shiny Note 7 variants, we also snuck in a few benchmark tests to see if the handset does any different than its Galaxy S7 and S7 edge counterparts.

For the most part, we can see the Note 7 is performing similarly to the S series from earlier this year. Makes sense, as it rocks the same hardware – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC (Exynos 8890 on international models) and 4 GB of RAM. On GFX Bench's T-Rex and Manhattan, the Note 7 scored pretty much the same as the S7 before it. However, on AnTuTu it earned 9,000 more points than the regular-sized flagship recorded when we tested it, for a total of 145,000 points — pretty much among the best Android has to offer. Still, it does get beaten on a couple of fronts by recently released competitor Moto Z Droid, and Apple's gargantuan iPhone 6s Plus.

Of course, we will run the same benchmarks multiple times when we get an actual retail Note 7 in our hands, so that we can get a better, more consistent result. For now, we can attribute the fact that the Note 7 did so well in AnTuTu, compared to the S7, to better software optimizations and possibly more room for cooling inside the phablet's slightly larger body.