[Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Questions & Answers] high_voltage:
What shortcomings? Few respected members @ XDA got both variants, Andrei from anandtech got them (he is also known as developer, if you didn't know), friend of mine who lives outside my country currently also got them. All of them returned the exynos and kept the snapdragon, all of them said they came prepare into that comparison but didn't expect the difference to be that big. There are also real tests that solidify this with facts + geekbench is THE ONLY bench that put the exynos CPU part ahead of the snapdragon, every other bench is the opposite. The exynos is not that bad, it's just not on the snapdragon level - there are more frame drops here and there, battery life is worse, the GPU is A LOT weaker leading to vastly worse gaming, app loading is slower (and this hurts a lot, simple example - app opening most will say w/e if it's 0.5s more, but when you open notification from messenger and in the one case it's like iphone smooth/instant opening the app and in the other slight delay and choppy animations when opening - then the user experience suffers), heavy multitasking is slower and choppier in the animations when transitions are happening, emulators are a lot worse on the exynos too. Just search for "how to improve exynos 9810" part 1 and 2 @ anandtech, then read the direct note 9 variants comparison and you will get the idea with facts. Subjectively everyone who tried the both variants said the same, this doesn't make the note 9 exynos super bad, but I payed more money (1140$ as euro > $) than someone in USA to get high tier midrange SOC. Don't forget that nowdays even a midrange SOC can run everything smooth, even games... but after a year, or two? What if you wan't to play demanding game and instead of fps drops to 20, to have 60 stable? What if you wan't smooth experience instead of frame drop here, frame drop there, choppy app opening, etc). Why should I pay more for less? Hell, even the DAC on the sd845 is really stepped up and the wolfson/lucky in the exynos are no more vastly better...

The exynos 9820 from what is officially revealed from samsung and leaked - will be no different, vastly behind the sd855, but let's see. (also both are roflstomped from the apple's A12 and even A11 pulls ahead, sadly they got other problems like price, locked OS, etc).

So to sum it up: is the exynos version that bad? No, it's not at all. The snapdragon version is just better at... everything this year and the difference is bigger than ever. When we combine that with the fact that in Europe we pay 1000 euro for the phone or 1140$ while in USA someone will pay 1000$ and receive a better GPU/CPU in the phone... well, yes, it's not fair and not like we have a choice either. Especially with this year week android manufacturers performance with copycat of apple iphone's worse aspects without taking the good ones.

---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:14 PM ----------

No need to be scared, the exynos variant is just fine. I am just a tech heavy person that has the knowledge to understand the deep architectural dives and into hardware, thus I can tell you that as a hardware the exynos 9810 even tweaked to it's best possible way will never match the sd845 both in CPU and GPU (or come close to it for an fact). The mali GPU just don't have the raw power to even be in the same class with the adreno, even the sd835 is faster in GPU. The CPU big cores has a lot going on, BUT they are really power hungry. Unleashing them to close the gap to the sd845 CPU, will lead to a bad battery life and a lot of heat - so it's not viable. Also there is something that should not be forgotten, galaxy s10 is just around the corner and tweaking the note 9/s9 will absolutely not be priority. The efforts from the competent engineers will go towards 9820 in the s10. What we have in android 9 will be most likely the last tweaking for performance for this device (atleast to a more measurable degree).

This should not scare you, as I said - the note 9 exynos is just fine and you will see that when you receive the device. I am talking about more of an power user perspective, but then again - you pay the same money as the person that got a better version of the phone = this is totally a scam from samsung, albeit a legal one.