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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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.