Samsung Galaxy S7 review: A mild improvement, but it's still the best phone around
If it were an iPhone, the Galaxy S7 would be called the Galaxy S6s. It offers minor improvements, including slightly better battery life, a marginally better rear-facing camera, and a somewhat more refined metal-and-glass chassis. It also marks the return of the microSD expansion slot to Samsung’s devices, as well as dust and water resistance. Despite all these marketable features, however, I don’t think the Galaxy S7 offers enough of that “wow” factor to convince the Android-using population that it’s worth springing for—especially if you’re already wielding any of the major flagships announced in the last six months.
If you thought last year’s Galaxy S6 was a fingerprint magnet, wait until you get your hands on the Galaxy S7. This year’s model has all the same glass-and-metal trimmings as last year’s marquee device, so it’s an absolute magnet for finger grease. Regardless, it’s an exceptionally attractive phone, albeit one you’ll have to wipe down with antibacterial solution from time to time.
The Galaxy S7 looks and feels like an evolved, refined version of the Galaxy S6. Samsung shaved a few millimeters off the edges—almost exactly a millimeter off each edge—and implemented the same curved back as found on the Note 5. You’ll also notice a subtle “bubble” effect made by the glass placed on top of the display as it sinks into the edges of the chassis. It shows incredible attention to detail on Samsung’s end.
The Galaxy S7 has all the same buttons and sensors as its predecessor: a power button on the right-hand side, volume rockers on the left, a heart-rate monitor built-in to the LED flash on the back, and a slightly raised Home button with a built-in fingerprint scanner. But after using the rear-facing fingerprint scanner on the Nexus 6P, Samsung’s implementation hardly compares. With the Galaxy S7, you’ll have to press the Home button and then scan in your thumb, which is just too much. I don’t like any scanner that doesn’t immediately launch to the Home screen. (It may also be time for Samsung to consider dropping physical navigation buttons altogether.)
Samsung heard your gripes. It brought back the expansion slot, which rests comfortably next to the Nano SIM tray, and it made the Galaxy S7 both water- and dust-resistant. The only caveat is that after you rescue your device from a pool of water, you’ll have to give it some time before plugging it in to the charger. It’s a safety precaution, and it brings home the idea that Samsung paid great attention to detail when designing the device. This doesn’t look like a phone that would be able to stand a dip in the water, but it is. I’m also glad to see that Samsung didn’t just go the Sony route and put flaps over every port. It’s better for my manicure.
Samsung improved the Galaxy S7’s 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display by making it a bit brighter. It’s especially obvious when it’s side-by-side with the Galaxy S6, though I first noticed the extra brightness as I was using the phone before bed. There’s also a personalized auto brightness feature, which remembers at which setting you like the screen for different lighting environments. This only works if you have auto brightness selected.
The Galaxy S7 also comes with the ability to enable an always-on display mode. This makes it so you don’t have to fumble with the buttons on your phone just to check on the time or notifications, and it’s similar to the feature already offered on the Moto X and Nexus 6P, only those phones will only light up the display when you pick it up or wave your hand over it. When enabled, the Galaxy S7 shows its always-on display all the time.
There are a few customization options for the always-on display, but you’re limited to what Samsung provides. You can’t import your own images for the background, for instance, nor will you see a preview of your notifications like on the Nexus 6P. I like the implementation on the Nexus devices the best.
I had fun this past year uttering “Exynos” any time I mentioned the Galaxy S6—it’s a fun word!—but Samsung is back to using Qualcomm’s chipset in its smartphones. The 2.2Ghz Snapdragon 820 is quite a performer. It offers all new faster “Kryo” CPU cores, and better image and graphics processing. Altogether, it’s an enticing package for anyone who needs a phone that’s fit for multitasking on a long train ride into the city, or for marathon mobile gaming sessions.
The Galaxy S7 whizzed by the Nexus 6P’s Snapdragon 810 and the Galaxy S6’s Exynos 7 Octa 7420. It’s fast, responsive, and especially quick at loading heavy applications, including large games. Apps loaded quickly and visuals were smooth—perhaps too smooth for gory games like Mortal Kombat X. In fact, I had a physical reaction to Takeda slicing the face off of an opponent precisely because it was too realistic. It’s certainly a testament to how far mobile gaming has come.
The Snapdragon 820 features a sealed copper cooling system, which is essentially a miniature, scaled-down version of a heat-pipe system you’d find in many notebooks. This is how the Galaxy S7’s metal chassis manages to stay comfortably tepid as you’re playing games or streaming video, though I’ll be checking to see if the Galaxy S7 keeps its cool when the weather gets warmer.
The Game Launcher is my new favorite thing about the Galaxy S7—and this is coming from a person who tends to roll her eyes at this kind of stuff. This little folder houses shortcuts to all the games you’ve downloaded, excluding any games you may have side-loaded. (I tried getting a space for my Humble Bundle picks in there and it denied me.) From here, you can choose whether to enable Game Tools, which will pin a small red icon in the far corner of any game you launch from inside the Game Launcher. There’s also an option that allows you to tweak the graphics performance, dialing it back to save on battery power. I’m curious about the actual battery life saved with this mode turned on, but I’ll have to test this at another time.
The Game Tools overlay offers options for shutting off alerts during a game, locking the Recents and Back keys so you don’t accidentally bump one of them and exit in the middle of it all, minimizing a game so that it doesn’t crash your system, and snapping a screenshot. There’s even an option to record your game play, which you can then upload to YouTube or whatever video sharing service you prefer.
The Game Tools and Game Launcher features remind me of the types of add-on applets that my PC gaming pals would download to enhance their own gaming experiences. It’s obvious that with these included software features, Samsung is making a ploy for the Twitch generation, and I think it’s a smart move.
The Galaxy S6’s 2550mah battery pack seemed promising after our initial battery tests, but things quickly degraded. I still can’t leave the house with the Galaxy S6 Edge, for instance, without an external battery pack in tow.
I’d hoped for better results with the Galaxy S7’s bigger 3000mAh battery pack. Like its predecessor, the initial results seem promising: the GS7 lasted seven hours and 15 minutes in our PCMark battery rundown test, and six hours and 56 minutes in Geekbench—about 50 minutes more than the Galaxy S6. I had about enough battery life at the end of the work day to commute home as I do with my Nexus 6P—about 40 percent—which actually sports a bigger battery.
On the weekend, I got to 40 percent after about four hours of use just by using Snapchat (a ton), Facebook, and Instagram on Wi-Fi—the social networking trifecta, if you will. Through the night, the Galaxy S7 barely used up any of its juice thanks to Doze mode. It used up maybe two percent of its battery while remaining dormant underneath my bed, and that's with the always-on display enabled.
One annoyance: the Galaxy S7 does not support Quick Charge 3.0. Samsung apparently nixed this because its Exynos chip overseas doesn’t yet offer support for it. It still supports Quick Charge 2.0 and charges up quite fast, but it's a shame to see that the Snapdragon 820's charging performance might be held back for such a lame reason. Wireless charging returns from last year, and with the right charging pad, you can now get fast wireless charging.
Samsung claims the Galaxy S7 can manage up to 10 hours of video playback before petering out—that’s enough for you to binge-watch an entire season of Game of Thrones. I’ll be testing this myself this week with ten of my favorite episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 and will update with the results. Stay tuned.
I didn’t think that Samsung could improve upon the 16-megapixel camera it packed into the Galaxy S6, but it outdid itself with the Galaxy S7. Samsung’s latest phone features one of the best cameras on any phone, though it’s only marginally better than its predecessor.
The Galaxy S7 employs a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera sensor with Dual Pixel technology, which is fancy lingo for the technology used inside most Canon DSLRs. Samsung’s sensor has two photodiodes in every pixel of the camera sensor, and which allows every single pixel to be a phase-detection autofocus point. That means faster, more accurate focus in all conditions.
I went for a walk around my hometown with both Galaxy devices in tow and was impressed by how much more well-contrasted the Galaxy S7’s photos were. It appears Samsung also fixed the light leak issue that was prevalent in its last few phones, though it still needlessly bumps up the sharpness. This can be annoying if you’re attempting to master some professional-level photography with your smartphone.
Our lab tests also showed that while the Galaxy S7’s 12-megapixel sensor has an aperture of f/1.7, it’s only marginally better in low light situations against the Galaxy S6’s f/1.9 aperture. Indeed, after shooting my own photos of my cat in my dark bedroom, I didn’t notice a very significant difference in low light performance.
The Galaxy S7 can shoot videos in UltraHD (4K). I didn’t try this because, frankly, I don’t have hardware that can display it. However, I did shoot a video in FullHD (1080p) at a concert I recently attended at The Fillmore in San Francisco, and I realized that tapping the screen to focus actually shuts off the auto focus feature. As a result, my video of the lead singer of St. Lucia wading through the crowd is blurry, and the mic seemed to focus specifically on my singing along. This is where I wish the Galaxy S7 had manual video controls the way the LG V10 does. Maybe next time.
Samsung kept the 5-megapixel sensor for the front-facing camera, but added in a few software features for those who are particularly concerned with the way their selfies look. The Galaxy S6’s “beautify” mode has been expanded to include a face slimming feature, eye enlarger, skin tone enhancer, and faux spotlight—similar to the effect you’d get if you were using a Lumee light case. There’s also a shape correction feature for when you’re taking a selfie with multiple people. The features are subtle and might seem pointless, but I actually know a few people in my personal life who use these filters on their own photos.
Lastly, if you were hoping for front-facing flash for you and your friends to take photos in darker environments, you’re out of luck. The Galaxy S7 uses screen burst to light up your face as the front-facing camera snaps a photo. It’s awful and I am always blinded by it. It’s too bad Samsung didn’t spring for the front-facing LED like the Moto X Pure Edition.
Say what you will about Touchwiz (I certainly have), but the truth is that there are people like my mother who aren’t power users that find Samsung’s version of Android to be more intuitive than stock.
For instance, Samsung added a blatant Notifications Settings option right below the notifications shade, which makes this new feature in Android Marshmallow more obvious to novices. I’d wager that some users have no idea that you can control the individual notifications settings for each application, so it’s nice to see that Samsung made some of Android’s essential new features more easily discoverable. You can also long-press on a quick setting button to go to the relevant settings screen, rather than having to navigate there yourself.
Samsung also dialed down all the blue hue throughout the interface, though it held on to the messy, discombobulated application drawer of the past. I like Google’s vertical horizontal scrolling application drawer better, with the search bar affixed at the top.
Also, be forewarned that if you’re buying your Galaxy S7 through a carrier, you’re going to get stuck with all the bloatware that comes as penance for not buying your phone unlocked. Alas, not all of us have the luxury of paying full price for a smartphone. You can’t delete these apps, but Samsung lets you drag the icon to turn it off, essentially disabling it. You’ll still have that application taking up precious storage space, though. When will the carrier bloat stop
Samsung’s bloat is still around, too, though the company’s been slowly whittling down how much it crams in there. The Galaxy S7 comes preloaded with Samsung’s own email client, file browser, S Voice, S Health, and Samsung Milk Music. The Verizon variant I reviewed also came with apps like go90 and the Gear app, both of which you also can’t remove.
Samsung still holds its spot as the top manufacturer in the Android world, but this is the year I’ll be watching to see whether high-end, expensive flagship devices like the Galaxy S7 can withstand the onslaught of perfectly good, unlocked, less-expensive smartphones making headway.
Here’s the deal: if you’ve got a Galaxy S6 in your hands already, keep it. You’re definitely good for another year, and some of the software features that come with the new GS7 will eventually make their way to your phone. But, if you’re still wielding a Galaxy S4 or Galaxy S5 or some other Android phone that’s let you down too many times, this is the best it’s going to get at this point in time—as long as you’re still convinced it’s worth spending gobs of money on a flagship device. If not, there’s always the Moto X Pure Edition or Nexus 6P, two perfectly-alright smartphones free from bloatware that cost far less than what your carrier will sell you the Galaxy S7 for.