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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mrochester - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
The problem with this assessment is that it means there's not a single tech website out there that isn't biased towards Apple, as you put it. I've actually seen Android Authority being accused of being biased towards Apple. My conclusion based on what I've witnessed is that some Android users just have a massive inferiority complex.mrochester - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2014/09/23...retrospooty - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
Your premise is nullified by pointing out the difference between "some" and "all". The fact that some people are spastic does not mean all are. I am simply pointing out the difference between the first 15 years at Anandtech and the past few years.KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, July 9, 2016 - link
Yup, Android is their god.benzosaurus - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
That's mostly just an artifact of how Apple releases things— most other vendors let details about new products come out in stages over a couple weeks, whereas Apple goes from "we can neither confirm or deny that product even exists" to "here, get your grubby paws on one" in about two hours. I suspect the total number of articles is similar.retrospooty - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
You must have been asleep the past 3-4 yearsPsyside - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
Please explain the absence of comparasion of the S7 to the iPhone in the charging section, while there is a negative "the iphone is clearly better" in every other section?Put off your glasses.
Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
The i-phone has almost the exact same camera module. I'm so glad you, oh mighty lord of vision that can see things others can't and ignored that all data points and etc. are here to correct everyone. Or maybe you and everyone else on the internet could drop the retarded tribalism. Could replace 99% of internet commentary with caveman grunts and "uhhh... duuuuhhhhh... Team A better. Team B dumbwit! Derrrrr...."Psyside - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
If anyone is having any doubts about the huge BIAS, you might missed the fast charging page.While, there is an comparasion and downplaying of the S7 in every way imaginable and ALWAYS compared to the iPhone 6s + (which is not the phone to be compared to, it should be the S7 Edge) the insane bias is clearly showed in the charging part, when there is NO SINGLE comparasion with the iphone, because its 2x worst in charging times, and would lose to every single android phone as well, this approve the clear bias and no one can deny it after it.
Josua Ho, i'm very disappointed and will ignore all of your future reviews!
Bigbank - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link
Rock and roll bro!S7 is quite amazing
Let's smash the iPhone to the junk pile😂