Last year Samsung dropped the Galaxy S6 while it was designed beautifully and had the power, it didn't have the battery power we wished it had. Coming from the S5 which offered a water-resistant body & expandable storage, it pissed some Galaxy loyalists off. Now we're shifting our review gears into Galaxy S7 territory.
Hardware
Beautiful like a museum piece of metal & glass.
Both versions of the S7 tout a Super AMOLED display w/ Quad HD resolution, powered by Snapdragon 820 CPU instead of the Exynos, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage that's expandable up to 200GB via micro SD, a f/1.7 12MP camera w/ a single LED flash + Smart OIS on the rear and a f/1.7 5MP camera in front, running Android 6.0.1 w/ TouchWiz, wireless charging, NFC, fingerprint scanner, and a 3000 mAh battery for the S7 & a 3600 mAh battery for the S7 Edge. The sum of all of these parts create a beauty of a museum piece of metal & glass.
Performance
Let's dive into how all of the parts of the new Galaxy devices handle. The QHD screens are pretty much-unparalleled w/ the rest of the smartphone flock. The AMOLED panels are still good enough to be the standard for high-resolution panels. You get great colors as it's not too saturated, amazing clarity, and superb viewing angles. The new On-Screen Display feature looks good but at the current time, there is no real viable reason to have it on just yet. Samsung opened it up to developers so hopefully, that can change.
The Snapdragon 820 chipset continues to perform like a champ. It zips in-and-out of apps like a breeze. Handles gaming and streaming media flawlessly. Add the chipset w/ the 4GB of RAM, this will easily hold up throughout the duration of you owning one. Although I've heard countless times that their new Exynos CPU is actually more superior. The battery life is a great improvement from the S6. The S7's 3000 mAh battery gets me around 8-10 hours on average. Light to moderate will get you around 10-14 hours of juice. While the S7 Edge's 3600 mAh battery got me around 12-15 hours on average. Light to moderate usage will warrant you around over a day's worth of juice.
And lastly, TouchWiz continues to improve in being a better UI for me. Still not a fan of Android skins but this is getting a bit better w/ each device. I'm still stock Android but I love what HTC did w/ Sense on the HTC 10. You still have the non-alphabetized app drawer, multi-window, one-handed mode, and Briefing: Samsung's twist fo Flipboard. The Edge panels on the S7 Edge get a bit more useful w/ the options of Weather, CNN News, apps, stocks, sports scores, and more but I still don't use it. What's new and interesting is the new Game Launcher that activates when playing a game. You can shut off alerts while playing, take screenshots, record video, and a bit more. This is actually done well. Bravo, Samsung.
*Click on pics for a full-screen view.*
Cli
Camera
Samsung went lower on the rear MPs due to their new DualPixel technology. As far as the performance side of things, you get amazing results. Fast to launch, fast to focus, and fast to capture. Photos showing off a tremendous amount of detail in each shot along w/ great clarity as well as superb color reproduction. It's also versatile enough to handle macro shots w/ great bokeh present. The front-facing camera is more or less the same as last year's but w/ a lower aperture You get great results but nothing groundbreaking for a selfie camera.
Now onto the new Dual Pixel technology we spoke about earlier. In a nutshell offers up bigger micron pixels to take in more light in the dark environments. For the most part, it works as advertised but in certain low-light situations the S7 results produce a yellow tint w/ a bit of overexposing. But it's more of a hit than a miss.
Samsung's cameras remain hard to beat but the competition is getting close, though.
Yes. Samsung does a good job in maintaining its status in the hierarchy of smartphone cameras. It isn't leaps & bounds better than the camera on the S6 but that's only because those shooters were hard to beat. They just fine tuned some things w/ more improvements to better handle anything situation you can throw at it.
The Galaxy S7/S7 Edge represent the best Android has to offer.
TG 2 Cents
Premium ingredients. Superior optics. Immaculate screen. Strong performer. These are all things to wrap up my final views on the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge. I more prefer the S7 Edge over the S7 for me per se. Samsung easily redeemed themselves from the Galaxy S6. Mind you it looked beautiful, the camera was dope, the screen was superb. But the TouchWiz was as good as it is now and that battery life was less than desirable.
Samsung has done it again w/ no surprise. This is the best Android device (next to the Nexus 6P for me anyways). The Galaxy retains the crown - until the new Nexus & the Note 6 arrives. Keep cleaning up TouchWiz Samsung and you will achieve Android perfection.
