iPhone XS Max Dominates Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in New Speed Test

It’s new iPhone season, which also means it’s the time of year when we see Apple handsets go head-to-head against their Android rivals.

YouTube channel PhoneBuff recently pitted the iPhone XS Max against Samsung’s latest and greatest flagship, the Galaxy Note 9. Spoiler: the iPhone XS Max dominated its Samsung rival by a good margin.

PhoneBuff uses a pretty typical setup in its testing, relying on a “relay race” scenario in which both devices launch a series of apps in order before re-opening them in reverse order. The channel is unique in the fact that it uses robotic arms to conduct its speed tests, which presumably reduces any human error to zero.

In the head-to-head test, the iPhone XS Max opened all apps faster than the Galaxy Note 9. It was also able to keep all of the apps open in memory — save for one — which allowed it to finish a full 15 seconds faster than the Note 9. That’s about a 10 percent difference.

Sure, it might not be that large of a deal in real-world usage. But it’s notable because the iPhone XS Max sports 4GB of RAM — half of the Galaxy Note 9’s 8GB. While the Galaxy Note 9 also kept open apps in memory, it had a slower time opening them in the first place.

Apple devices routinely beat competing Android smartphones in these types of real-world speed tests. That’s despite the fact that Android flagships usually have specifications that, on paper, look a lot better than their iPhone rivals.

There are several factors that contribute to the iPhone XS’s snappiness. Apple has bumped up the RAM on its new handsets and iOS 12 sports a number of speed improvements.

The A12 Bionic is also a staggeringly fast piece of silicon.

Last year, the Galaxy Note 8 beat the iPhone 8 Plus in a similar PhoneBuff speed test. That was due to the fact that the iPhone 8 Plus wasn’t able to keep apps in memory due to its lower RAM specs. Instead, it had to reload each app.

But iPhones have always done a lot more with less when it comes to RAM. Not only that, but since iOS is a first-party platform, Apple is able to more easily optimize its devices and software to work seamlessly with each other. The results are telling.

Earlier this month, Tom’s Guide put the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max through a series of benchmark and speed testing. As you might expect, both new Apple handsets put basically every current Android flagship to shame.

Of course, the smartphone industry is incredibly competitive — and no device or manufacturer can keep the throne for long. But these tests prove that, for the time being, Apple has the fastest smartphone in the world.