The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge Review: Part 2
by Joshua Ho on July 5, 2016 8:00 AM ESTCharge Time
While charge time is no longer much of a concern in light of how OEMs have made it a major priority in the last few product cycles, I still wanted to go ahead and verify its effects. Testing this is done with the usual method of monitoring until power draw at the outlet reaches a value approaching 0 to try and eliminate inaccurate battery percent reporting as a problem.
Interestingly enough, the Galaxy S7 charges faster than the HTC 10 here even though both have similar power output on their AC adapters. I suspect that we’re actually seeing the differences between QC 2.0 and QC 3.0 here as the environment in San Jose recently has never gone below 80F when testing. At any rate, the delta between the Galaxy S6 and S7 in charge rate is effectively not worth talking about, which isn’t really a huge surprise.
Miscellaneous
The miscellaneous section of each review is really just a list of comments that are too short to justify a separate section, but something worth discussing regardless. The first of these subjects is sound quality. While I don’t really have the ability to test 3.5mm output properly, I can say that the speaker output of the Galaxy S7 is weak without question. Maximum volume is quite low, and even ignoring that the quality of the output is nothing special with emphasis on higher frequencies. I suspect this is just the cost of waterproofing at work here.
The fingerprint scanner remains a Synaptics design win, and it generally works quite well. I like it a lot but it isn’t particularly fast or reliable the way the iPhone 6s’ TouchID is. I would say that it’s better than the iPhone 6’s fingerprint scanner, and is comparable with the HTC 10’s fingerprint scanner. However I do favor the HTC 10 fingerprint scanner design as it’s faster to just place a finger to the fingerprint scanner rather than pressing a button and waiting to scan, but the delta here is basically not worth talking about.
Samsung Pay is actually, finally available. Weirdly enough the magstripe transmission still has applications as places like Safeway seem to have completely ignored the liability transfer and continued using magstripe-only readers. Places like Walmart don’t seem to have NFC enabled despite moving to EMV which is strange to say the least. For the US, Samsung Pay actually does provide value, and turns paying from your phone from an occasional experience to a common one. For now at least, Samsung Pay has some real value which is good to see.
I haven't seen any real issues with GPS on the Galaxy S7, as OEMs have been taking this sort of thing seriously for a while. I don't think anyone is really going to face issues with GPS at this point, but it's worth mentioning just to confirm that this is the case.
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realbabilu - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
If we bought for performance. The lags or the speed of apps is quite small than last one or two years ago oneplus one s801, you can't fell it big difference unless on benchmarking apps.The photos can tell different story, you can know it good or bad than last year mobile or other features like ois
ntp - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
That's a very thoughtful reply, Impulses, thanks. But with the small sensors of smartphones I think 3/4ths of a stop is a significant advantage, more so than in the case of large sensor cameras, since we'd care about the F number in low light scenarios, where the ISO will be high. I'm just saying it should be better emphasized so people understand the real world advantages it gives.Impulses - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
It's a valid point, I'm just saying you can't look at that in a vacuum, specially since you're not looking at an ILC anyway... If you can't swap any parts, then the end result is all that really matters and that includes sensor efficiency, post processing (unless you're shooting RAW, a rarity on phone users), the presence of OIS, effectiveness of the latter, and even things like how smart the auto mode is...That last bit is probably beyond AT's more data driven evaluation, but a phone that relies to heavily on OIS for instance (or HDR) might take more blurry shots under real life conditions... That actually does favor a faster aperture but the point is emphasising specs in a vacuum is pointless.
mavsaurabh - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
I just wish to reply regarding aperture , you rightly said that f no causes cost to skyrocket in case of lslr ens all else being equal, the catchphrase is all being equal ! In case of constraints of mobile photography, lens stack size & weight limitations, heat produced etc leads to various compromises like plastic lens which coupled with bigger apertures leads to higher corner aberration, diffraction etc etc. in end as Impulses wrote what matters is the end result which is fine tuned balance of various compromises made !I am a pixel peeper and street, landscape photgrapher by hobby with 25 years of film and digital shooting through Slr's , mobiles , compacts, Fuji X100.
My observation is that samsung uses hard sharpening and over saturated colors which "creates" pleasing photos on phone screen but if you display it on decent monitor and zoom to even 50% you will see various artefacts and no latitude for post processing. Now most of casual photographers will like larger than life portrayal or smearing of face pimples etc by clever use of face detection but hey any one who loves photography will differ!
I completely agree about fast focussing advantages but honestly i am yet to use a mobile camera with lens fast enough to freeze pet/ child movement in indoor light to take advantags of fast focussing.
Only phone which was able to do that with use of proper flash though is Nokia 808 Pureview and kudos to its mazing manual controls plus superb post processing which bettered apple even in natural post processing !
beggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
please just stop those BS apple biased benchmarks at 10x lower resolution... just take them off the chart! its not even a good comparision and serves no uses.realbabilu - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
What you see on your screen mobile is what you get. Offscreen just measuring the gpu can do,basically it useless for user because you can't see it.lilmoe - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
"The one notable shortfall here is that Samsung only allows 800 ISO max in manual ISO mode when the true maximum is 1250"I had that number in mind when I read it last night, and was too lazy to test. I've tested it now and my unit can go up to 1600 ISO. Is that also a variable difference in Samsung's sensor (mine is Samsung made), or is the extra third stop on mine extended?
Chris_m1296 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Joshua ho, how did the exynos 8890 manage this score on slingshot es 3.1 unlimited? mine only got 2223 and even 3dmark themselves list the exynos version at 2223.UtilityMax - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Some people complain that the review is too harsh. But my personal view is that if this is a +650USD smartphone that _also_ happens to be carrier locked, it'd better be not just good, but _excellent_ in every respect. Otherwise, it's not clear what exactly justifies the price premium over a phone like Oneplus 3 or why a typical shopper should choose this over an apple product.Impulses - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
I kinda agree... I still feel some areas could've been better tested given how long the review date got dragged out, but there was still content here that's pretty unique to AT. I think the market, overall, is definitely giving the high end OEM too much of a pass given the prices phones are now commanding.A $1,000+ laptop with performance sapping bloat that the user can't remove (that aren't part of the core OS) would get ripped to shreds. It's time $700+ phones were held to the same standards.