The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
by Joshua Ho on August 16, 2016 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
As previously mentioned this year a major goal of ours was to focus on benchmarks with metrics that better indicate user experience rather than being subject to additional layers of indirection in addition to updating our previously used benchmarks. Probably one of the hardest problems to tackle from a testing perspective is capturing what it means to have a smooth and fast phone, and with the right benchmarks you can actually start to test for these things in a meaningful way instead of just relying on a reviewer’s word. In addition to new benchmarks, we’ve attempted to update existing types of benchmarks with tests that are more realistic and more useful rather than simple microbenchmarks that can be easily optimized against without any meaningful user experience improvements. With that said, let's get into the results.
Browser performance here is pretty much in line with expectations as pretty much every OEM using Snapdragon 820 is going to be using the same basic BSP and most of the optimizations here are going to be done by Qualcomm rather than the OEMs.
Again, performance is in line with expectation in PCMark, although there are some improvements here and there that are primarily centered about web browsing performance which is almost constantly being improved as developers figure out new optimizations for browsers. With that said we can move on to Discomark, which is a true high level benchmark designed to show exactly how quickly a suite of common Google and OEM applications load from NAND or from RAM.
Here the Galaxy Note7 shows some improvement on hot runtimes relative to the Galaxy S7, but the cold runtimes have dropped for some reason. It looks like much of the delta here is due to Dropbox which is now running significantly slower on the Galaxy Note7. I suspect that this is related to possible changes in Dropbox or its interaction with TouchWiz rather than any significant underlying difference in system performance relative to the Galaxy S7. Overall, the Galaxy Note7 performs about where you'd expect from a Snapdragon 820 device from Samsung given the performance of the Galaxy S7.
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Ratman6161 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Don't like the icons? Does anyone really care (hint: I don't)? Don't like TouchWiz? Use a different launcher. Ditto with the built in apps. This is one of my reasons for using Android in the first place. If I don't like what the manufacturer supplied, its no problem. Just don't use it. I've got Nova launcher and a standard set of third party apps that I use across all my Android devices that makes them all look and function more or less the same for any thing I do. About the only exceptions are anything related to the S-pen.And refresh the design again? What for? Of course marketing people want constant change so they can convince the uninformed that its "new and improved". Just get rid of the gimmicks like curved screens and call it done. Within the next few years phones are going to be essentially commodities anyway.
polygon_21 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Its too bad launchers only change the home screen and the app drawers... you are stuck with touchwiz for the rest of the stufflilmoe - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
The thing is, as trivial as the icon complaint is, if he dug just a tiny bit deeper, he'd realize that the new theming engine now supports icon-packs...jospoortvliet - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
Sadly I haven't figured out how to disable or delete many of the built in apps...TheCurve - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Really nicely done, Josh. Made my morning. Cheers!Cod3rror - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
For some reason many modern cameraphones have a real problem rendering vegetation. They all make trees and grass look like it was oil painted. Here's an example from Anandtech's Moto G4 review, the left is OP3 and the right one is MG4+. The left one looks like it was oil painted. http://i.imgur.com/AlXPMap.jpglilmoe - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
You can only do so much with sensors that small, and software that prioritizes speed of capture and processing (since that's what most users want). If you want more, go fully manual.3ogdy - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
It's amazing to see Samsung continue with the same design language introduced with the S6 Edge. Finally a phone that looks different, among a slew of pieces of glass and plastic that look identical. Companies releasing phones that have the same old dog gamn design should be utterly ashamed to put such insults on the market. One could see more variance comparing two dog gamn stones than comparing two "oh-so-new-shiny-awesome-unbelievably-cool-my- s s a <-" smartphones.3ogdy - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Oh and I couldn't give one fraction of a damn about volumetric efficiency BS. The lack of a removable battery is not a smart choice Samsung has made.I shouldn't have to risk destroying my phone just because I'd like to replace my battery or simply force the phone to turn off if it freezes for whatever the reason. There is no excuse for not including a removable battery. Period.
zeeBomb - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Back to back phone reviews from anandtech... What a time to be alive