Watch OnePlus' 4-month old flagship phone blaze through the latest Google and Samsung devices (GOOG, SSNLF)

Rahimi PhoneBuff

David Rahimi is the owner of the YouTube channel PhoneBuff.
PhoneBuff makes videos where devices are put to the test against one another to see which one performs better.
The OnePlus 5 scored a notable victory in the speed test against Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 and the Google Pixel 2 XL.

OnePlus, a Chinese company born less than four years ago, made a smartphone that, put to the test, is faster than both Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 and the Google Pixel 2 XL.

David Rahimi, the owner of YouTube channel PhoneBuff, puts smartphones against one another in so-called speed tests, where two (or more) of them battle against the clock while performing a variety of tasks.

The latest test came as a three-way confrontation between the latest and greatest handsets from a company relatively new to the game, OnePlus, one of the biggest, most powerful and established mammoths in consumer electronics, Samsung, and the very maker of the Android operating system itself, Google.

Neither Samsung's manufacturing prowess nor Google's touted software and hardware optimisations, however, could do much against the overkill spec sheet of OnePlus' phone, which — more than anything else — boasts an absolutely massive, laptop-worthy 8GB of RAM.

PhoneBuff's speed test is made in such a way that it tests both the CPU's rough speed (translated into real life, app opening times) as well as RAM management.

In practise, this means that all phones open a total of 16 apps that vary from light (think camera or calculator) to graphics intensive (like video exporting or games), and then do the same thing in reverse to see how much the RAM can keep open.

Pixel 2 XL vs Note 8 vs OnePlus 5

All devices use Qualcomm's latest system-on-a-chip, the Snapdragon 835, and they munch through the first lap relatively evenly, in fact. However, when it comes to the second, the difference in RAM becomes immediately noticeable.

The OnePlus 5 ends the test at 1.45 minutes, a full 11 seconds before the 6GB-equipped Note 8 is done. The Pixel 2 XL, which had actually finished the initial round just a split second before the OnePlus 5, is instead a far cry, with its 4GB struggling to keep all apps open and taking it no further than 2.09 minutes — an absolutely gigantic difference.

It should be noted that these tests try to stress the phones out and basically push them to their maximum, so the actual difference in real life should be less noticeable. Still, it's interesting to see that rough components can have such an impact in a device's performance, in spite of software optimisations.

Check out PhoneBuff's full video down below.