8 is going to be important in seeing if any changes have been done to overheating and battery life. If it’s only something like a 5-10% improvement to battery life then 9 will most likely be the same if still using Exynos infrastructure.

Love photo sphere but it’s too slow in most applications

That’s before the companies realised that this is not where the money is unfortunately. Reminds me of the infinite light bulb story