Not only have we found issues in real-world performance, but some of our writers also came across uncomfortable heat (close to 40° Celsius) while doing mundane tasks such as listening to music or watching YouTube videos on LTE. When setting up long-running benchmarks to measure performance over time, we found that the Note 7 throttles earlier and much harder than the much-cheaper OnePlus 3, even when both are set on equal footing at 1080p resolution. We are only getting our feet wet into the in-depth performance part of our review, though, but we are pointing this out because as you can see the drop is humongous and from one test to the next, similar to what we experience after very long periods of usage.
And to be honest, we don’t think this is merely a matter of Samsung’s software being too heavy or “bloated”. As we have previously said, much cheaper devices with the same chipset manage faster app-opening speed and much more fluid scrolling and system UI navigation. But the OnePlus 3 and the HTC 10 have clearly-lighter skins. Even then, though, the Honor 8 with its extremely-heavy EMUI manages to outperform the Galaxy Note 7 in every single test, and offers some of the best performance today.