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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Axiomatic - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
My cube mate over the wall from me got the Note 7 today. His immediate comment to me was, "well it performs better with Nova Launcher than Touchwiz."trparky - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
When you have to replace stuff on your phone to get acceptable performance, there's something wrong.silverghozt - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
Are the photos from the Note 7 worse than the Note 5? Can you please compare. I'm astounded that the HTC 10 is taking better images.BoyBawang - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
Dear Anandtech,Please do a battery life test of the lower screen resolution settings. If the result is significant, I'll immediately permanently put it to 1080p without second thoughts the moment I have the device. I don't care if the mutant pretenders say that they can distinguish the difference.
thanks
lebigamaca - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
It looks like you got the size of the rear camera pixels in reverse. Both are 1/2.6 inch so the 16 megapixel should have smaller pixels than the 12 megapixel.skrewler2 - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
it would have been nice to see a picture of the s7 edge and note7 side by side or stacked on top of each other so we could get an idea of how much bigger the note isaryonoco - Friday, August 19, 2016 - link
Does the phone ship with the latest Android Security Patch level?Has the manufacturer committed to providing security patches on a timely basis?
Has the manufacturer committed to providing Android upgrades for X number of year?
Why are such basic questions that affect the usability and viability of a phone ignored by AnandTech? We don't all buy new phones every 6 months. Some of us are holding on to our phones for 24 months or longer. The question "will my phone receive OS updates during its lifetime" is a very valid question that AT pays no attention to.
Similarly we have paragraphs dedicated to the PMIC and various ICs in the phone, paragraphs dedicated to seeing if the phone drops a frame here or there, but no attention paid to the fact that the phone ships with unpatched remote root vulnerabilities.
Anandtech's reviews are becoming less and less relevant. Sure, it's cool to know what IC is doing what in the phone, but it's absolutely irrelevant to its day to day use. Knowing if the OEM is going to supply OS updates and security updates in a timely manner very much matters!
tamalero - Friday, August 19, 2016 - link
As someone who changes cell phones once every 3 or so years.. I'm pissed the current trend of copying Apple and their non changeable battery.Worse when Samsung no longer seems to produce older batteries to force to upgrade.
Not exactly a fan to be forced to for 500+ USD for a throwaway phone.
tamalero - Friday, August 19, 2016 - link
errata.. "not exactly a fan of being forced to FORK 500+ USD for a throaway phone every year"name99 - Friday, August 19, 2016 - link
"Despite all of this, there seems to be a general disappointment with smartphones."Come on Joshua, where do you drag up this nonsense?
There is a tiny fraction of internet whingers, hyperactive fools with the attention-span of 5-year olds and generally the technological to match, that are "disappointed".
Meanwhile in the real world, people are using their phones more than ever --- have you SEEN what a group of public people waiting around (think airport, restaurant, bus) looks like these days?
People in the saturated wealthy nations continue (so far, as of the most recent data) to buy phones on the reliable two-year-update cycle --- and why not? This year's phones are faster than those of two years ago, with more RAM, faster flash, better radios,nicer screens.
Meanwhile people in the non-wealthy world continue to be grateful for the ever falling prices, and enjoy moving on to their first smart phone.
You are not in the business of click-bait or insane interest advocacy; you are in the business of tech journalism. You don't need to write to such stupid sentences; you;re better than that; and the market you're discussing deserves better.
And starting with a stupid premise leads to what are factually flat out factually incorrect statements like "People are increasingly finding it hard to justify phones like the HTC 10 or Galaxy S7 with competition from..."
HOW are people finding it hard to justify phones like the S7? Everyone knows I'm an Apple fan, but I'm also tuned into reality, and the reality is that the S7 has sold pretty damn well, (as far as I can tell perhaps 20% better than the S6).
Look it's probably true that one day we'll hit enough of a wall in phone tech that the upgrade cycle WILL slide, and consumers WILL be massively over-served by phones. But let's not pretend that that prediction has already arrived.
Part of the problem is that these reviews operate with a broken context. It makes sense to compare against last years model, but it also makes sense to compare against the model from two years ago because THAT is where the audience for this product is. Complaining that it won't excite the community it isn't TARGETED AT (ie the owners of last-years model) is just stupid.