We learn that every technical specification of our mobile devices and marketing, to some extent, has made us care about the speed and the number of cores of the integrated processor and the amount of RAM that is supposed to make a better multitasking experience. In reality, more factors like software optimizations and how the device manages every task affect the overall performance of smartphones and tablets. This time around, the recently announced Galaxy Note 5 gets compared to the LG G4, one of the latest flagships to be announced during the first half of the year, in a test that compares the speed on things that we would do in a regular basis such as opening apps and games.
The Galaxy Note 5 has the massive amount of RAM of 4GB, which is rather uncommon these days, while the LG G4 has 3 GB in this department, typical for this year’s flagships. The octa-core Exynos 7420 of the Galaxy Note 5 is considered to be among the best ones achieving very high scores in benchmark tests, meanwhile, the LG G4 includes a processor that’s not even the best offering of Qualcomm, being a hexa-core Snapdragon 808. Both phones have displays of comparable sizes and the same resolution and the cameras also have similar resolutions, plus they are both running Android 5.1 with the respective maker’s skin on top.
As for the test, the first thing is to open a bunch of apps, the user opens some stock ones, Google apps like Gmail and the Play Store, the camera app, some social network apps and Angry Birds 2, which is a graphically intense game. The Galaxy Note 5 really shines in this part of the test as the amount of RAM really helps to open the apps really fast, even the game loads up in a very short amount of time. The total time for opening these apps is about 42 seconds for the Galaxy Note 5, while the LG G4 takes about 58 seconds to open the same apps. Interestingly, when opening those same apps for a second time, the Galaxy Note 5 has to reload each one of them, while the LG G4 seems faster as they were kept open in the background, so this handset wins the second part of the competition by a few seconds. The user also praises the Galaxy Note 5 for having a physical Home button, as it allows him to return to the Home screen faster than having to swipe for that button to appear. Either way, both handsets offer a solid performance and the time difference in which they completed both phases is not that great.