Review: Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are smartphones of the people.

Their feature sets don’t necessarily speak to a grandiose vision from Samsung regarding the company’s future. They don’t offer solutions to problems users weren’t aware they had. They don’t shed grams and millimeters in exchange for compromised battery life. In many ways, the S7 devices represent the anti-iPhones.

Samsung took almost all of the complaints that people had regarding the Galaxy S6 line and simply fixed them. Improved battery life. Waterproofing. Speedier fingerprint sensing. Expandable memory.

Battery lifeline

The S7 saw its battery capacity increase nearly 20% while the S7 edge (which is powering a much larger screen now) received a battery with 40% larger capacity.
I am perhaps more mindful with my battery saving techniques than most but I was very impressed by the improvements I saw in the S7 line in regards to battery life, both phones did stellar jobs of lasting me through the day in light of Screen-on Times floating around 6-7 hours.

Specs and Performance

• Quad HD Super AMOLED 2560×1440 Screens
• Quad-core 2.15GHz + 1.6GHz Processors
• 4GB RAM (LPDDR4)
• microSD Card Slots
• Always-on Displays
• IP68 Water and Dust Resistance
• Cameras: Rear: Dual Pixel 12MP / Front: 5MP
• Android 6.0 Marshmallow

In Geekbench tests of my devices, I found the S7 edge scored a 2279 in single-core performance besting the S6 edge by 52.4%. Improvements in multi-core were more minimal with the S7 edge’s score of 5460 besting its predecessor’s score of 5186 by just 5%. The S7 performed similarly to the S7 edge in my tests.