id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> The Samsung Galaxy S9 will be revealed this Sunday, February 25 and there's little doubt the upcoming phone will be fast. And Antutu Ranking on a warm, sunny day at Qualcomm's headquarters in San Diego, California, Antutu Ranking we found out exactly how fast that might be.

The Galaxy s9 plus antutu score S9 is expected to be one of the first phones in 2018 to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 chipset. The chipset is the phone's brain. You can't run the operating system, connect to the internet or process photos without it. The Snapdragon 845 also comes with advanced features that will produce more colorful photos and videos, longer battery life and xiaomi antutu biometric security that guards your privacy with your fingerprint or face.

Here's the Snapdragon 845 reference device, running a graphics test.

Jessica Dolcourt/CNET A poorly performing chip means the entire phone could run slowly, and the battery probably won't last as long. So when Qualcomm offered to let us test the claim that Snapdragon 845 will work 25 percent faster across the board compared to the Snapdragon 835 found in last year's Galaxy S8, we jumped at the chance.

We journalists spent two hours running and rerunning a suite of 12 benchmarking tests on Android reference phones that the company whipped up specifically to evaluate and fine-tune Snapdragon 845. For a truer reading, we gave the phones a chance to cool down when their batteries grew hot.

Together, the dozen benchmarking tests simulate how well the graphics (GPU), raw computing power (CPU) and websites among other things will run on phones that use this chip.

I then ran the exact same tests on some of 2017s top phones when I returned to San Francisco: the galaxy s8 plus antutu benchmark Note 8, Pixel 2 XL and LG V30. And yes, all three used last year's Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 835.

Now playing: Watch this: Galaxy S9 mostly aces our real-world tests 5:03 You'll see the results in the charts below, but spoiler alert: The 845 device performed at least 25 percent faster than the best score on all but four tests out of the dozen.

Now, benchmarking tests are only one indication of performance, and there's a lot they don't cover. Keep reading for more on that.

The new chip is hitting at a time when Qualcomm, the world's largest chipmaker for mobile phones, needs to show it's still the apex predator. The company faces increased pressure from device makers like Huawei and even longtime partner Samsung, both companies that make their own chips (Samsung phones often use Qualcomm in some regions and their house-made Exynos processor in others).

Qualcomm is also locked in a legal battle with Apple that it's currently losing -- perhaps along with Apple's business -- even as the ensuing threat of a hostile takeover by giant chipmaker Broadcom looms.

But a wave of best-in-class phones made with Snapdragon 845 will give Qualcomm the prestige it needs to sell more chips and strengthen partnerships as it prepares to usher in 5G phones next year.

Now playing: Watch this: We test the Galaxy S9 in the real world 9:22 What's a reference phone and why does it matter?
The phones running Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 CPU aren't exactly prototypes, and you'll never be able to buy them. They're what's known as "reference devices," working phones meant for in-house use.

In this case, Qualcomm relies on them to test new chips in as close to a real-world environment as possible. The reference devices also work as a proof-of-concept for partners that might consider making a phone or other device using the chip.

Snapdragon 845 reference phone specs

5.5-inch LCD screen with 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution


Dual rear cameras: 12-megapixel and 13-megapixel


Front-facing camera: 12-megapixel


2.8GHz Snapdragon 845 processor


6GB RAM


USB-C


No headset jack


Not waterproof

Snapdragon 845 vs. Galaxy a10 antutu Score Note 8, Pixel 2 XL and LG V30
I ran 12 benchmarking tests a minimum of three times each on the Snapdragon 845 reference phone, in some cases rerunning tests six times when the results seemed off-target. I averaged the results.

Then, I ran each test three times on three other phones: the Galaxy Note 8, Pixel 2 XL and LG V30, which all run on Snapdragon 835. That's a grand total of 150 benchmark results to average and compare in the chart you see below.