The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
by Joshua Ho on August 16, 2016 9:00 AM ESTIC Design Wins
While we normally allude to the various things that we find in a phone in the interest of providing some extra depth for posterity I went ahead and dug through the software to find all the various peripherals that are present in the Galaxy Note7. For example, the Wacom digitizer identifies itself as the W9010 over i2c, which is interesting considering that this digitizer is the same one found in the Galaxy Note 3. In various briefings it was explicitly said that the digitizer supports double the number of pressure levels, so I’m not sure how this is achieved or if it really has any changes at all besides the smaller tip.
Moving past the Wacom digitizer we can see that there are a number of supporting ICs for power management and things like the battery charger. I’m not going to spend a ton of time talking about this but a huge number of these are Maxim Integrated ICs such as the MAX77838 switching regulator/PMIC, although I’m not clear on exactly what this PMIC supplies. There’s also the MAX77854 which functions as a PMIC, as well as a MAX98506 class D audio amplifier for the codec, which is likely used to drive things like the earpiece, speaker, and 3.5mm jack. This is shared with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge and it looks like it uses the same WCD9335 audio codec so I wouldn’t get my hopes up about improved audio quality for the Snapdragon variants. If you want better audio you’re going to have to look towards the Exynos variant or the HTC 10.
Moving to slightly more boring but critical parts of the Note7 there are ICs like Cypress CapSense PSoC which enables the capacitive buttons and a TI BQ25898S battery charger IC which supports 9V and 12V charging voltages for adaptive fast charge. There’s also an NXP PN547 NFC controller and an NXP P61 secure microcontroller that seems to be for payments and similar applications. It should also probably surprise no one that there’s a Validity/Synaptics VFS7xxx fingerprint scanner here, although I found some mention of an Egis Technologies ET320 fingerprint scanner which makes me wonder whether Samsung is dual sourcing here.
The more esoteric ICs here include a Richwave RTC6213N FM radio tuner and a CEVA DBMD4 DSP which seems to be for always-on voice commands which are visible on i2c and SPI respectively. The only IC that I can’t identify at all is something called the SX9320 over i2c, which officially has zero mentions on the internet unless you count a Shacman trailer that is manufactured by Shaanxi Automobile Group in China or NGK spark plugs. At any rate, looking at these kinds of details it’s much more apparent just how critical economies of scale are as these are parts that seem to be shared across the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, which surely helps to drive down cost due to the sheer volume of these devices. There are also things like FM tuners which aren’t necessarily going to be a point of advertising for a phone but are neat to have anyways.
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Cygni - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
I would like to see Anandtech stick to its guns and go back to calling "USB 3.1 Gen1" what it really is, USB 3.0. I remember a previous AT article announcing that the site wouldn't be supporting that marketing crap.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
nice phone, but not worth anywhere near the money samsung is asking, between the fragile construction and the sealed battery. Note 4 is a much better buy, even at this point.keg504 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Is the Galaxy Note 5 stylized as Note5 or is just an error on the first page? I have seen this in other places as Note5, so it's gotten me curiousPolizei608 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Thanks Joshua for the review, greatly appreciate it and the timing! I'm a big HTC fan because of the smoothness of their sense experience, and this seems to be overlooked in every smartphone review. I was about to pull the trigger on the note 7 after doing endless review reading, and then I read your final words regarding real world use and was extremely happy I didjhoff80 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
So the USB-C port uses Samsung and Qualcomm's fast charge, making it not actually compliant with the USB specification? Why wouldn't they just use USB-PD other than 'because Samsung'?vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
You say:"Looking at the overall charge time the Galaxy Note7 performs respectably as it reaches full charge in under an hour and takes basically as much time as the Galaxy S7 edge, which is probably not a surprise given their similar battery capacities."
But your chart shows the shortest charge time at 1.33 hours (Galaxy Nexus 5X)? And the Note 7 at 1.85 hours? Am I reading this wrong?
Which is strange, because my S6 has never taken more than 1h20s to charge, and I'm pretty sure many phones beat my S6 on charging...
lilmoe - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
With all due respect, this review provides NOTHING additional to what's been said and written online about the Note7/GS7 series. We come here for deep dives, SoC comparisons, software features that affect performance, etc......This review is nothing but personal opinion.
"The S-Pen continues to work well although I very rarely have any use for it"
Really? Like REALLY? Is that all you have to say about the absolute hallmark of this particular device??? No mention of the actual hardware improvements/regressions/whatever? No mention of its responsiveness or lack thereof? You think anyone gives a rat's ass about force touch? But you all still wrote paragraphs about a freagin' iGIMMICK.
Also Again??? No mention of throttling? No mention of the new power saving features? No mention of Game Tuner? No deep dive of the different SoCs???? Not a single attempt at tinkering with the kernel/governor to get a freakin' glimpse of what the heck is going on?????????
What's wrong with you guys???
amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Well, get use to it.If it's a feature that iPhone has, then it will get mentioned.
If it's a feature that iPhone doesn't have, then it's "irrelevant".
Just wait till iPhone 7 Pro gets a stylus and iPhone 8 gets a iris scanner, then you will get paragraphs after paragraphs about how amazing they were.
As a reader, we can do selective reading as well. When it's about 3D-touching, my mind goes blah blah blah, irrelevant. Coming up to live phones, blah blah blah, irrelevant, next paragraph.
whiteiphoneproblems - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
This is the sixth Galaxy Note with a stylus. I have no doubt that when Anandtech reviews the sixth iPhone model with 3D Touch, they will say little more beyond it "continues to work well."Oyeve - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
I hear ya. Its like the reviewer was intentionally looking for something NOT to like. He goes on about mic hole placement and useless crap like that. Ironically this site waxes on the iphone symmetry so much like its an amazing feature. If it wasn't for the forums I wouldn't even come here anymore.