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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10basetom - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I would say the Exynos model is a little better than the SD820, but not significantly so.lilmoe - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
No. It's a lot better. Almost generational. I went on a weekend trip with a friend who has a SD variant, the differences were too significant to the point he bought the Exynos variant....Even the camera processing is better. The Samsung sensor is even better than Sony's as well.
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
As I read the article, I was sort of wondering at Samsung's rational for having two different versions. The Exynos seems to win a lot of the benchmarks and overall seems like the better SOC. I know I've been very happy with the 7420 in my Note 5.MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
They may not be able to produce enough of them, so they dual source.adramaleck - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
From my understanding the radio is part of the SOC on both chips. The US (Verizon and Sprint) is the only major market where CDMA is still in use. So in the rest of the world Samsung can sell one model which supports GSM frequencies and their own SOC. However, since Verizon (and I assume Sprint) require CDMA support in order for them to allow the phone on their network, Samsung probably find it more cost effective to use the Qualicom chip instead of adding support to the Exynos or producing their own.lilmoe - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
What I was hoping for is a comprehensive deep dive of the differences in hardware of the GS7 series.The "true" GS7 models are equipped with Exynos SoCs and all-made-by Samsung parts (including camera sensor). The rest are mix and match units that are comparable to the rest of the "generic" premium flock of devices (including the G5 and HTC 10), in which share common components and only differ in design.
I seriously wouldn't have minded a review that craps all over Samsung for this deliberate variety in handset hardware, but instead we get a rather lazy attempt of a review where the author is trying really hard to be underwhelmed. Totally not worth the wait...
SunnyNW - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
This^. I visit the site quite often but have to agree "Totally not worth the wait..." I was under the impression that the delay might be to give us a detailed deep-dive into the different SOC architectures, you know the Kryo core and the new custom M1 from Samsung. Instead I am having a hard time understanding why it took so long to deliver this review, considering it as a whole...lolipopman - Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - link
Are you just going to disregard the GPU benchmarks? Or the fact that the throttling on Exynos is far more horrendous?Amazingly delusional.
zeeBomb - Saturday, July 9, 2016 - link
Holy crap. About time...rohanneo - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
OH MY GOD!! I can't believe it. Been waiting for this article since months!!Really unprofessional of you guys to take TWO months for TWO parts of ONE REVIEW!! Be better next time.