I have to wonder how this even sort of matters in a day where most people have a somewhat limited data connection. No one is fully utilizing that connection regardless. Not to mention both of those speeds are likely faster than home internet in most of america. I'm not sure this means much of anything.
Long story short to simplify the article. One device on a certain chip performs better in real time use than the other. Considering there are many videos and data showing the same results on the Note 8 vs iphonex, this is old news to many of us
Last year's version beat the X, why wouldn't the newest version? That was even provedright here at Tom's Guide. https/www.tomsguide.com/us/galaxy-note-8-vs-iphone-x-lte,news-26128.html
It's Samsung's gigabit lte compatibility. The radios improve download speeds even before 5g is really out. It'll even improve speeds of phones around it - even ones without gigabit radios.
I just ran the same test with iPhoneX on ATT in NJ and I got 84 Mbps down and 21 Mbps up. Its a silly test and it depends on so many factors. Rewrite this article after you've tested this on every carrier and compared the connection strength for each.