The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge Review: Part 2
by Joshua Ho on July 5, 2016 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Galaxy S7 in a lot of ways represents the sort of end game for the smartphone market, but before we get into these kinds of overarching discussions I want to recap everything we’ve learned about the Galaxy S7 before we get into the conclusion in earnest, which includes part 1 of this review.
We can start with design, where the Galaxy S7 shows quite a bit of resemblance to the Galaxy S6, with clear influence from the Galaxy Note5. Ergonomically the Galaxy S7 is just a step up. The Galaxy S7 edge is really more of the same as well, and I still have the same complaints about how the edge display affects ergonomics in a way that it doesn’t on the Galaxy S7, but both are okay. The one major note I have here since part 1 of the review is that screen protectors other than wet-applied TPU types are not really going to work properly on either the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge as the curve in the glass for both begins before the end of the display, so anything that is flat won’t cover the entire screen the way you might expect for the HTC 10 or iPhone 6s. The design doesn’t really blow me away, but it’s decent for its time.
The next notable area is battery life. While I’ve seen a lot of people rave about battery life on the Galaxy S7, however I don't feel the data backs this up. The Exynos 8890 variant is generally a step up in battery life, but the Snapdragon 820 variant is basically comparable to Exynos 7420 and by extension the Galaxy S6 and Note5. The Galaxy S7 edge is the only device that is an obvious step up in battery life for both variants, but this is through sheer battery capacity rather than any efficiency gains, as the Galaxy S7 edge ends up being a fairly heavy device in return for its great battery life. Charge time on both devices is competitive and in-line with expectations.
SoC performance, as well as storage performance are all commendable, but in general I don’t think there’s really been an appreciable change in the landscape with regard to SoCs. Snapdragon 820 and Exynos 8890 are both decently fast, but their speed is not really all that notable compared to Apple’s A9 SoC, especially when you consider things like browser performance which is heavily reliant on single-threaded performance. Kyro/Cortex-A72 is as good as you can get in the Android ecosystem at this time, so among Android phones this is top-tier performance, but in the broader landscape it's going to be overshadowed by what Apple has done.
The Galaxy S7 with Snapdragon 820 is also strangely slow in real-world situations as seen by Discomark, which is honestly somewhat puzzling. Samsung needs to put some real optimization effort into their Snapdragon devices as they actually trail the competition here to some extent, although if you aren’t that observant it’s unlikely you’ll notice a huge difference. Storage performance is great, but not really comparable to the iPhone 6s. This isn’t really a function of NVMe or UFS, but the design of the storage system itself. Given that Samsung is developing fairly small BGA SSDs already, I suspect the delta will go away soon. If you take away Apple devices, Samsung continues to ship some of the best storage on the market.
On the display side, Samsung continues to ship great AMOLED displays. While efficiency is not appreciably improved relative to the Galaxy S6 I would say that the best AMOLED panels now are greater than or equal to the best LCD panels. If Samsung can figure out how to reach efficiency parity with the best LCDs regardless of displayed content I would say that high end smartphones should really only be shipping AMOLED, but this is conditional upon whether OEMs can actually source these panels. Regardless, the Galaxy S7’s display is pretty much the best you can get in an Android device.
With camera, Samsung has managed to ship a fairly revolutionary camera sensor with phase detection at every pixel in the sensor, which makes it the fastest-focusing camera we’ve ever seen in a smartphone or tablet. Samsung has clearly prioritized speed here, and it’s great to see the kinds of amazing things Samsung is capable of achieving when their priorities are in the right place. However, with that said the output of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge’s camera is not that impressive. I would argue that while it’s not worse than the iPhone 6s Plus, it is basically comparable. The real competition in this space comes from the HTC 10 and LG G5, the two of which manage to deliver arguably better still image output, and the HTC 10 manages to be comparable or better in video output other than slow motion. After a year of pointing out issues with slow motion video it seems Samsung has gotten around to shipping a solid implementation of this feature on the Galaxy S7, but they still seem to be limited by encode blocks on the Snapdragon 820 variant. The Galaxy S7 camera is good, but it’s not really amazing or all that well-rounded, unless you just don’t care about natural post-processing, good video stabilization, or detail-preserving noise reduction.
When it comes to WiFi, Samsung is doing an acceptable job, but not really a great one. The Broadcom BCM4359 chipset they’re shipping is a solid foundation, but throughput in general with respect to reception quality is just acceptable. Roaming latency is also well above what Apple is achieving with their devices. It does take enterprise-grade equipment to figure these issues out, but given the size of Samsung this should be a trivial task to get right. To be fair to Samsung, they are still doing better than HTC in this regard but Samsung is clearly trying to go after the enterprise market with the Galaxy S7 while HTC is still mostly targeting consumers.
The final area of discussion is software, and frankly Samsung’s UI just isn't something I find good. While the redesign with the Galaxy S5 was a solid step forward, in the time since Samsung has been stagnating in design yet again. While it’s fair to argue that design philosophies vary with culture, the Galaxy S7 is fundamentally an Android device and whatever changes Samsung makes to Android in terms of user interface need to be consistent in design so users have a similar experience with first party and third party apps. While themes can alleviate the issues to some extent, relying on third parties to solve fundamental problems with your user interface is really not what I would call a good user experience when themes can have noticeable effects on performance and battery life.
Outside of user interface design, it’s fairly obvious to me at this point that Samsung’s UI is just not particularly performant for whatever reason. While the 8890 variant might be better, the difference between the two SoCs is not so great that there should be noticeable frame drops in places like the app drawer, launcher, and settings app. Don’t get me wrong, the phone is usable despite these issues, but to continue justifying the $600+ USD price of these devices these problems just can’t be present.
Overall, the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are solid phones, and overall are quite good. However looking at the broader path this phone has taken Samsung on, I’m left with the feeling that Samsung is just trying to follow industry trends rather than really approaching the design of their devices with some focus in mind. Samsung is clearly capable of incredible things as they were first to ship a device with UFS storage, the first to ship a 14nm FinFET SoC, and the first to ship a sensor with PDAF for each pixel.
The Galaxy S7 is clearly packed with features and ticks all the right boxes, but as soon as I start looking closer at everything I start to see cases where Samsung just doesn’t seem to care enough. Everything about the phone seems to be targeted towards being a great experience for the first week or two of ownership and while that strategy has worked well for them I’m left wondering what Samsung would be capable of if they cared about getting things right even if no one would notice the extra frame drop or 50ms of roam latency. I want Android phones that can be the best in the industry without any double standards, creative metrics, or qualifiers, and Samsung is clearly the OEM best-positioned to carry this out, so it's frustrating to see them fall short.
The Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are still great phones, but the difference between a $400 phone and a $700 phone are these details when phones like the OnePlus 3 are providing almost the same product at a dramatically reduced price. There are clear points of differentiation between the Galaxy S7 and OnePlus 3 or Mi5 in terms of features, but I don’t think it’s enough to be worth the $300. I think the only way to really justify the difference here is if you can get the Exynos 8890 version, which isn't necessarily an indictment of the Snapdragon 820, but rather the attention to detail that the Exynos variant receives.
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invinciblegod - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
Apparently by your metric nothing can ever be compared to an iphone. "You can't compare a Lexus to a Mercedes, that will be BIAS!!!" The only thing annoying about this site is the complainers who have no valid arguments screaming BIAS.retrospooty - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
How about when the iPhone 5s came out. Any other flagship gets 1, maybe 2 article. That day the iPhone 5s had 14 articles on it... 14 articles. That in itself shows the bias and that continues to this day, even after Anand left to go work at Apple. Reading the article above I see it clearly. Reading their iPhone reviews I see it clearly. There is an obvious reluctance to say anything negative about Apple and an obvious reluctance to say anything glowing about a product that competes with Apple. If you dont see that at Anandtech you simply arent paying attention.michael2k - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
15? I can only find 9 articles for the 5S spread across 5 days, and one appears a month later.They had a hands on, and a video of the hands on, rather than combining the two. They had their announcement article as well as an availability article; they could have combined those as well. They also had separate articles on camera, battery, and CPU that could have been combined with the review.
That said, that isn't a sign of bias, that's a sign that Apple articles pay the bills. People read them and generate the prerequisite clicks necessary to get page impressions.
retrospooty - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
It is possible it was hte iPhone5 release date... But it was 14. I recall it, because I commented after 11 that they had 11 bloody articles already and then 3 more came afterward, all that same day. That includes the main articles and the pipeline articles. Not sure how they archive them and that isnt the point. The point is the site is clearly biased. I remember you as well m2k, you are an old timer at this site as well and a well known apple defender. You are the target market and you are right , that is where their money lies. The only thing you are not right on is the bias it shows. When the site is reluctant to say anything too heavily negative about Apple and too positive on competing products, its a bias and this site has it, and has had it for many years now even years before Anand wen to work for Apple (if that isnt a clue already). If you dont see it, you simply aren't looking.michael2k - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
There is something wrong with you if you think of people as with you and against you (Apple defender, Apple biased, etc). Yes, this site does favor Apple, they get a lot of coverage.You think it is wrong, yet the article lays out some of the reasons why they get so much coverage. Look at the CPU performance and you see that the 820 and Exynos both struggle to hit the top of the charts. Anandtech has performed multiple reviews over multiple iPhone releases to explain why that is the case; it isn't bias, it really is that Apple made a remarkable series of CPU designs.
We also see the same thing doesn't occur in the GPU, but we did have multiple articles talk about the PowerVR because sometimes Apple did have a range topping SoC. As previously discussed, the user base reads these CPU and GPU articles.
You can look at sales figures to see why Apple gets more attention than Samsung. In three days the iPhone 6S sold 13m units. In three months after the launch of the Galaxy S7 sold 25m units. There are really many more people reading the iPhone articles; that is the bias of the world, not the site, you're working against.
retrospooty - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
" if you think of people as with you and against you" Where did I say anything like that? I am simply pointing out a bias - not about taking sides. Like I said, if you are looking for unbiased reviews, Anandtech is no longer the site to check on. If you already like Apple and aren't looking to change, and you want in depth articles on Apple products, its a great site. If you want somewhat less than complete articles on say, Samsung products 4 months after launch, it's a good site too. Get the point? You and I are both pointing out that the site has become Apple-centric. You just like it because you are an Apple fan - not that there is anything wrong with that. ;) I do not like it becasue I am a fan of tech in general, so the site I "grew up on" has sold out to clickbait. Anandtech from 1997- (maybe) 2012 wasnt like that. It used to be about the tech. Now it's about the clicks and catering to one particular companies products. If you dont see that, then you are the new target audience and are happy with it. No worries dood.fanofanand - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
The bias is obvious. Josh spent several months with an iPad Pro before he could give it his review, I am not aware of him spending that kind of time with any other devices being tested. I think the Apple fans are dwindling in number, maybe people are figuring out that electronics aren't their friend, nor are the corporations that make them. I can't recall seeing anything negative said about any Apple product reviewed here since......ever. There's your bias, the implication that any product from a particular corporation is flawless. Retro I have read your comments for years and have always been entertained. Seems you don't post as often anymore :(retrospooty - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Thanks... Yeah, I dont post too often because I dont come here too often anymore due to the issue being discussed. It's just not about the tech anymore its about the clicks and the money.akdj - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
You guys are hilarious.The extent that this crew has gone to improve the objective testing and measurements, the two part, in depth and all encompassing review of the s7/s7 (both variants; SD/Exynos) and the well written and 'time spent' using the devices put a WHOLE helluva lot more 'meat' in to the review & their conclusions.
As an ambidextrous user of both Android and iOS, I usually skip gens of Android and trade out annually for the latest iPhone. I still have my Xoom and the first iPad. The Nexus 7 & iPad 2 as well as a Note 4 and S6 Edge, I have the 6s+ as well and I enjoy all of them as smartphones. That said, and as an owner since day one ... I have too come to the same conclusions year in and out. iOS especially when you figure in its ecosystem of apps/& cross platform development so you're able to also enjoy the experience on your tablet ...an area Android STILL hasn't figured out compared with the iPad & Surface ...as well as Apple's understanding of SoCs and performance characteristics, updates, post purchase support and resale values ...you're truly insane (doing/buying the same thing while expecting different results) with your declarations of bias and conclusions about other sites that rushed their review out four days after it dropped. Insane!
The review clearly and objectively presents a whole lot of inarguable data and 'author time' spent with the piece they're reviewing.
If you go back and read Apple reviews, any of them, you'll find areas of the review favoring Android implementation or design. From the display and cameras to the 'off the shelf' SoCs everyone with exception of Samsung is using to power their devices.
Apple simply knows WTF they're doing and speaking from experience now nearing a decade using both - iOS and their dual/tri-core silicon designs, speedy memory(storage) and phenomenal memory management to keep battery longevity up as well as camera tech and understanding the whole 'package' - radios, security, durability, support and the largest library of software in history because developer monies ....how do you convince yourself the same bullshit year in and year out? Is that TechCrunch/Giz or CNet "review", in your opinion and published just hours or a couple days after release and minus the measurements and time spent somehow more 'valid' in your opinion? I honestly can't believe how the ignorance and blatant disregard for these amazing reviews you can read for free and than hide behind your goofy screen name and keyboard to bash the author who's soooo much more intelligent and knowledgeable than you, ALL of you will EVER be when it comes down to reality and mobile development
It also seems the masses agree. Apple sold 1/2 as many 6s & + models in 72 hours as Sammy did in three months, and it was the biggest 'down quarter' Apple's had since the iPhone dropped. Same thing on the tablet front. I also own each iPad including the two sides of Pros. Anand's reviews on both are incredibly spot on.
*I own and operate a business and have been waiting for the day iPad would replace the laptop or AIOs we use in the field. They are always connected, durable, reliable, and maintain incredible stamina when 'live'. I'm not blowing smoke as I have been extensively testing them and Air2 was the one ....even if a bit small. The 12.9" iPad Pro/256 is the best piece of gear I've ever purchased and at 1/2 the price of a MacBook Pro or Surface Pro - I'm saving money and don't have pre-event concerns about wifi access.
My take as an S6 Edge owner and reading the two reviews of the S7, I'm happy to skip that gen of Android. While I'll still purchase a Note 6/7 or S8 - it's not for pleasure but support and knowledge ...as iOS clearly and not subtly blows Android out of the water with the perfect phone -tab/lap or desktop integration and aggregation using Handoff ....there's a continuity that exists both vertically and horizontally that can't be matched. Period.
To argue and piss and moan about free and well written journalism is fruitless. Just. Go. Away. I can't understand why you would still be here, with the "Apple Bias" so prevalent. Like last year and the year before that, and the year....
Serious, those of you that still enjoy Android, this is a great phone. Just maybe not as great as Gizmodo or TchCrnch reported the day after it was released ;) --- and may NOT be the best Android choice for others.
Savanah - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I heard iphone sales are an all time low. Are you suggesting Apple is still selling more iphones than Samsung is selling their Galaxy series?