[skavi]

Definitely not the software. Samsung consistently ships very well tuned flagships. Compare their performance and efficiency to other devices using the same SoC, and that much is clear.

Of course, we can only say this about their Qualcomm devices, since there aren’t other Exynos devices to compare against Samsung’s.

[Jweb_Guru]

Qualcomm makes all their own firmware, drivers, etc. and my impression is that it's considered to have much better software quality than Samsung's stuff. Take this with a grain of salt though since I'm hearing this second-hand.

[skavi]

Devices using the exact same Qualcomm SoC can have significantly different performance and efficiency [0]. Samsung devices tend to do very well, even though they are typically among the first to ship the chips.

In the article I've linked, you'll see the Samsung S10 gets the longest battery life of any device using the Snapdragon 855, while still placing at or near the top in the performance charts.

[0]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14794/snapdragon-855-phone-ro...