Samsung Galaxy S7 Review

Samsung have finally done it they have perfected their design language taking the same metal frame and the dual glass panels from last year with the Samsung Galaxy S6 they have further refine the design and now have made one of the most accessible phones ever. The 5.1 inch screen size really helps with the handling but the bezels on the sides are also very respectable, but it's really those curves on the back of the phone that make all of the difference.

The phone just sit so beautifully in the hand and it's really easy to maneuver around especially with one hand going left or right with the phone is really easy and then minimal hand gymnastic are needed in order to get to the top.

Pretty much all of the elements are about the same here you have the home button up front that has the fingerprint reader embedded underneath that is also a little bit more flush with the body but it's really the camera on the back that's no longer protruding out so much that really shows just how more sleek this phone is that last year. The phone is about a millimeter narrower from last year's Samsung Galaxy S6 but is also about a millimeter thicker now that is to make room for the curve on the back but also in order to provide room for the 3,000mAh battery underneath.

Specially considering everything that this phone is capable of doing it's great that the body the first thing you see of this phone happens to be really attractive and you get the phone in the hand it happens to be one of the most accessible handling phones that are out there right now.

The display of the Samsung Galaxy S7 is a returning Super AMOLED display coming in a QHD resolution but it has high pixel densities given the 5.1 insides. Super AMOLED displays bring pretty much everything you would expect super punched out of highly saturated colors and also that whites aren't necessarily true white because unlike an LCD there is no backlight on here.

What I did not like about the display is the fact that it requires a lot of managing on the brightness, if you were to take the brightness slider and bring it all the way down to the left it's almost as if you turning off the display. I typically have to have it around 40% just to keep it legible specially went indoors and then if I go outside I have to crank it all the way to a 100% just to make sure that it is perfectly visible. This kind of managing of the screen brightness especially for better battery life is just a little bit annoying and definitely little bit more cumbersome than usual.

The main addition when it comes to the display is the fact that it can be always on when the phone is in standby, a small graphic will come up showing you either the time or a calendar or a few graphics which are predefined, now it may not be the most useful feature at least not in its first iteration right now but I do have to admit that if I'm trying to figure out what day a particular date lands on in the next month it is nice to have the calendar on at all times.

All in all however you still get the same quality from Super AMOLED screen that you would expect on a Samsung device, that thing is we've seen a lot of AMOLED displays on plenty of other devices on the last year so it got me thinking maybe because AMOLED is becoming so proliferated maybe we're just more accustomed to seeing these over saturated colors.

In performance I have to tell you that I have been using the Exynos 8890 version of the Samsung Galaxy S7 as my daily driver and for that matter we are comparing it to the Snapdragon 820 version which I did receive recently in order to see what the differences are between the two. But in performance I really have had no issues with the Samsung Galaxy S7 especially considering some of the new transitions put into TouchWiz it also makes perfect sense that Samsung have really optimize their processing package for their own software and it definitely feels like so.

In terms of gaming I do have one quick thing to mention there is the water cooling that is available with the processor in the Samsung Galaxy S7 and though were not able to really test that in real time but I can tell you that under heavy load in my case playing for extended periods of time the phone did not get as hot as some other devices might have a special one more recently and ultimately it didn't feel uncomfortable to have the phone for extended periods of game.

In hardware the first thing we can talk about is returning feature from the Samsung Galaxy S5 water and dust resistance, that means that the phone could get wet and you just have to take it all into it and it should be perfectly fine to go. The only place that water will actually affect is the speaker grill on the bottom it will muffled out all of the audio atleast until it dries out.

That said however the speakers not really anything to boast about it is still pretty much average maybe just a little bit below average considering we have plenty of better speakers with lets say front-facing or even dual stereo placement nowadays.

Which leads us to a feature that is returning the Samsung Galaxy S7 that I think everybody was really excited about expandable storage we've really taken advantage of it with a 200GB microSD card that we put in and even though I'm not necessary the type of user to use up 32GB of onboard storage that quickly it is nice to know that one that is used up I still have 200GB more which I could use for photos videos and music.

Now let move to the battery the battery is at 3,000mAh unit inside of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and it's not removable but with this unibody and very sleek design that is kind of okay. On heavy usage I'm gonna get screen on time of about three and a half hours but if I'm using the phone more normally I can get up to four maybe even five hours of screen on time without any problems.

Nonetheless however if you are a more moderate user you could probably stretch out the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy S7 to a solid two days, but there is still fast charging supports and the micro USB port on the bottom provides that it does not have USB Type-C which might feel like a step back from what supposed to be the future of Android, but we do think that the reason for this is so that the Samsung Galaxy S7 can still tap into VR platforms like the Gear VR.

Now we can talk about the camera down to 12 megapixels from the 16 I was in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Note 5 after it. Now 12 megapixels might seem a little bit poultry these days, but the reason for it is actually quite sound. The pictures themselves are made bigger and they will provide better low-light performance.

But before I talked about that we do have to mention the front-facing camera, it does provide some really good quality selfies for those of you who want to take self-portraits more often, than the 5 megapixel shooter up front will be able to do the job, but what I really like about the front-facing camera is that it can record 2k or QHD video and that will make it really good for anyone that just wants to take some videos of themselves.

Other modes include slow motion panorama and a couple of other modes that you may or may not use, but the App itself is pretty easy to use even if the controls my get somewhat overwhelming at times especially if you get into the pro mode. You do get shutter speed control and the white balance is available in Kelvin readings.

4k video recording is available but as is the case or has been the case for the last if you use 4k video recording you won't be able to take advantage of some of the enhancements like for example video stabilization, but OIS is able to help a little bit with these videos and overall they have come out quite nice.

Now the pictures of the Samsung Galaxy S7 are going to be smaller than that of the Samsung Galaxy S6 that's because of the 12 megapixels but you also lose some of the details from moving away from 16 megapixels, now this doesn't mean that the photos aren't necessarily sharp, so if you take it for what it is the photos look really great. Its only when you really zoom in you can see that not only are the lines a little bit less sharp but there's also some noise reduction trying to compensate for that.

The sharpness is a little bit lower because of noise reduction and I actually found that the photos aren't necessarily so oversaturated, but I did like is that the HDR mode requires you to actually use it in HDR situations it's not just going to add a bunch of saturation and shadows of every single folder instead you'll see a difference only when you're on high contrast situations, otherwise if you have HDR auto on then you'll be able to just let the guesswork be done by the phone.

There are couple of caveats with this camera however if you go into more lower light situations the phone on auto mode does tend to go warmer with the color temperature, now that makes everything have sort of a yellowish or maybe even an orange hue and everything so you just have to keep that in mind when using the Auto Mode, you can always going to the Pro Mode and compensate for that using the white balance slider of course.

Ultimately the camera the Samsung Galaxy S7 is everything that you would want, only somewhat enhanced with the lower megapixel count in the larger pixels that makes for better low-light performance, but the issue with that is that in broad daylight shots in those situations when you're out and about and the lighting is perfect you are losing a little bit of that sharpness is because you're losing detail going from 4 megapixels.

But considering just how fast it is to use his camera by just double tapping the home button and then getting right into the camera it is a very good companion to have on the daily as a camera shooter.

There aren't too many new additions in the software other than the games launcher and tool, essentially the game's launch allow for all of the games are you have installed to be put into one particular place and when playing in your game you can have a games tool that can lock the recent and back capacitive keys and provide you easy access to a few functions while within your game.

Multi tasking still pretty easy on TouchWiz as well with the multi-window capability and also the popup view that shrinks down most windows so you can drag it around and have overlaid windows on top of your workspace.

That said however on 5.1 inch screen there is not really too much real estate to be able to do all of that you are able to use it if you really need to but ultimately the larger 5.5 inches Galaxy S7 Edge's screen is probably better suited for that multitasking to you.

Samsung Galaxy S7 is available now at all the major carriers and we're coming at the more premium price for flagship so you would typically find either on a contract or for about $700 or more for an unlocked device.

So there we have it the Samsung Galaxy S7 in addressing the issues that came up in the Samsung Galaxy S6 last year they've been able to create a smartphone that just might be accessible to pretty much anybody especially if you're a fan of the Samsung Galaxy S6 but you thought it was missing a few futures, this just might be the perfect smartphone for you, but there are some more implications behind the Samsung Galaxy S7 in the era of micro USB Samsung just might have shown us what the perfect smartphone could look like and in doing so they've been able to show us what might be the final evolution of this era of smartphones.

This is a turning point for smartphone technology as we move into a world of USB Type-C and also modular designs and hopefully more out of the box thinking but until all of that gets hashed out you just might have one of the best phones available right here in the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Samsung Galaxy S7 it is an incredible device and even if it's not necessarily unique or different compared to last year's phones and is still one of the most reliable phone can probably have on the day.