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
I wish AT can check the touchscreen latency between these mobile. Sometimes you got powerful chip but still some lags noticeable.I want to see where the real apps excluding the benchmark app that can utilize all Cores and where the cpu can use smart management where the app need use all power and which not. Simple that sometimes a 2D games like
Air attack 2 could raise temperature very high. Smart management cpu may decrease the power that doesn't needed for those apps.
Good review. And nice to review high end to cheap Chinese phones, so we can now where it pays..
Magicpork - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
So it took them 4 months to write up an Apple Biased review... no wonder the reputation of anandtech has fallen so much recently..KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, July 10, 2016 - link
This comment section taught me that reality is biased.Instead of being mad at Anandtech that a GS7 got BTFO by an iPhone SE, maybe you should demand more from Google and OEMs to improve their hardware and operating system.
Ihabo - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
Galaxy S7 Edge Wins In:+IPS68 Water & Dust Resistant
+Quad HD Super Amoled Screen ( brighter under sun light ) and immersive
+Dual Pixel New Technology Camera - Very Fast in Auto Focus & Low Light
+3,600mAh Battery last one day easily of heavy usage
+Exynos8890 Better than SnapDragon 820 in Battery Performance.
+Wireless Charging
+No Heat while fast charging
Phone of the Year no Doubt
beggerking@yahoo.com - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
now only if they'd bring removable battery back... then i'd be all over it.still keeping my s5 for the time being.
AJP - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
Regarding the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge Review, when comparing benchmarks please take into account the APPLE Iphone screen resolutions are much lower. That will bias the results in their favour and should be considered before making any comments.blackcrayon - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
Did you even read the review? For as long as I can remember, they've been showing both onscreen and offscreen GPU benchmarks for this very reason. And they specifically mention it in the review that the iPhone GPU keeps up on-screen because of the lower resolution.As for the CPU benchmarks, it comes down to Apple's really high single core performance and optimized browser engine. One advantage of designing both the hardware and all of the software in tandem.
JoeDuarte - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
Does anyone know what the author means by Google's optimizations - or lack thereof - for Chrome on Android? What optimizations? Does Google normally do something special? I don't understand what he's referring to.Also, what does he mean by Samsung's lack of optimization of the UI? Is there a standard set of optimizations that OEMs do on Android phones? Is he talking about low level C code, or ARM assembly or something?
Impulses - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
In the case of the browser, there's optimizations other browsers can and have done for specific SoC, it used to be a lot more common before Chrome for Android being the stock browser tho it's still prevalent... I'm guessing for whatever reason Google has never implemented such hardware specific optimizations.In the case of the UI, there's a lot of Samsung elements added atop the base OS that do drag performance down, other OEM have scaled back their OS customizations or fine tuned then over time (namely Moto and HTC to an extent)... Samsung's approach is still pretty heavy handed.
UltraWide - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
"Samsung is better than anybody else at learning from its competitors. "A market reader is sort of the classic fast follower," explains Barry Jaruzelski, senior partner at Booz&Co and the co-author of the Global Innovation 1000. "It doesn't mean they ignore their customers, but they're very attuned to what competitors are doing and what other people are bringing to market first and observing what seems to be gaining traction, then very rapidly coming up with their own version of that innovation."http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-corporate-s...
That's always been Samsung's strength, it will take time to change the whole corporation's mantra.