Samsung Galaxy S7 Review

After playing around with the new Galaxy S7, we became increasingly aware of how this years’ TouchWiz flavor doesn’t necessarily make any huge gains over last year’s interpretation. Generally speaking, the look, feel, and execution of TouchWiz all remain unchanged – save for the fact that it’s running on top of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, carrying along all the new features of this most up-to-date version of the platform.

Visually, however, the iconography of the homescreen and app drawer has transformed into what Samsung dutifully refers to as ‘squircles.’ The name implies its look, blending a circle and square together to form this so-called ‘squircle’ icon shape. It’s rampant amongst the native apps, but doesn’t apply to third-party apps. It’s a small change that most will probably overlook, but it’s nevertheless a slight alteration.

Functionally, Samsung doesn’t deviate from the recipe it followed with last year’s interpretation. In a time when many other competing custom skins have scaled back with their feature sets, TouchWiz remains a packed one that appeals to a broad set of users – including power users! Staple things like Multi Window, one-handed mode, quick launch camera, and many of its other smart features are all present once again with this iteration of TouchWiz.

As much as it might come off as being an advanced, complex interface, Samsung has kept the same streamlined experience we’ve come to appreciate. No doubt, all of TouchWiz’s features won’t be used by everyone, but the beauty in it is that it’s not overly complex or convoluted. By default, many of its advanced features are turned off, but they can be enabled by traversing through the options.
You wouldn’t know it, but there are a few new additions to the TouchWiz experience…

The Phone app on the Galaxy S7 remains unchanged from what we had with the Galaxy S6. The same default, bright green theme is in place, offering the same suite of functionality.

The interface of the app is split into three self-explanatory tabs: Log, Favorites, and Contacts. Your incoming and outgoing calls are recorded by date and time, and digging deeper into concrete events gives you an overview of past communications and their length.

Other neat features include the ability to swipe across a contact left/right to text/call them, and call blocking. Exclusive to the S7 (and the S7 edge) is a new feature that draws upon database of known cold callers and tries to recognize incoming calls from unknown numbers in order to save you the hassle.

The Messenger app has also remained largely the same, sporting that bright yellow theme of old.

Standout features of the app include the ability to tweak font size, add priority senders, lock sensitive messages, adding quick responses for when you're in a rush and can't commit to typing, and tweaking the look of the chat background.

As with the Phone app, you can manually add numbers to a blocking list to get them to stop bothering you, while the previously mentioned feature again lets the S7 draw upon its database of known cold callers to better serve you when a particularly tenacious sales reps is trying too hard.

With the S7, you're getting the Samsung S Planner app in lieu of a more appropriately named Calendar. It has the same functions you'd expect.

Identical to its past incarnations, S Planner is mostly concerned with getting the basics done right. There are multiple views available depending on your preferences (year, month, week, agenda), and you can even switch to a separate Tasks tab to make sure groceries shopping is done right and you don't forget to pick up acidophilus milk.

Borrowing a useful feature from its line of wearable devices, the Always On Display feature of the S7 keeps a small portion of the screen always on to show relevant information such as the time, date, and some notifications. Other new and upcoming phones have their own interpretation for this process, such as LG’s G5, but for the most part, the availability of always-on displays is still a very new thing.

Better yet, there are several different styles to choose from if the default one isn’t up to your liking. Beyond the clock, there are options for different calendar styles, as well as pre-selected stock images. Now if you’re the type that’s conscious about power consumption, you can choose to disable this feature altogether – albeit, Samsung tells us that they believe it’ll use less than 1% or so of the battery per hour. So far, we really don’t notice this feature critically impacting the battery from a day-to-day basis.

Game Launcher

Gamers know the pain of being engrossed in a game, to suddenly being interrupted abruptly due to some sort of notification – whether it’s something minor like an email notice popping up, or having it crash because of an incoming phone call. Samsung understands this kind of annoyance that hardcore gamers face, so that’s why they’re introducing Game Launcher. Turning it on, the feature places a folder on the homescreen that populates with all the games currently installed on the phone. It’s pretty intelligent in sniffing out the gaming titles that are installed, but the listing can be manually arranged as well.

Interruptions are annoying while you’re deep into a game, but a floating ‘game tools’ icon is accessible at any time to set certain rules and permissions. For example, we can set it so that there are no alerts whatsoever during a game, or lock the recent and back keys to prevent accidental presses. There’s even an option to record gaming footage, which is something that gaming fans will surely appreciate, since it allows them to share their replays, victories, and much more.

System Performance

All is well with the Snapdragon 820!

Last year’s Galaxy line was a unified bunch that exclusively harnessed Samsung’s homemade Exynos chips to power its devices. This year, however, they’ve reverted back to a familiar strategy that splits up the load. For US-bound Galaxy S7 devices, like the Verizon one in our possession, they’re being powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest in the Snapdragon 820. As for everyone else, some international variants of the S7 will have the Exynos 8890, while others will again utilize the Snapdragon. Samsung promises equal performance between the two.

Either way, the Galaxy S7 is complemented with a whopping 4GB of RAM – the dual-channel variety to ensure things operate smoothly. And that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing thus far with this Snapdragon 820 powered S7, producing all the buttery goodness speeds you’d expect from a top-tiered smartphone. Normal every day operations perform with a tight response, so there has yet to be any instance of delay.


Synthetic benchmarks indicate that the Snapdragon 820 is at the top of its game, reaching new heights in several tests. There’s no compromise with its graphics processing prowess either, seeing that the Adreno 530 GPU shows incredible finesse in dealing with all of today’s graphics demanding titles. Its strong real-world performance is indicative of its superiority, but for those who are still skeptical about battery drain, especially for a device with a sizable Quad-HD screen and blazing processing hardware, its support of the Vulcan API allows for high-performance graphics processing with lower battery consumption.

As it currently stands, Samsung is only offering a single storage option for the Galaxy S7 – 32GB to be exact. Although that’s more than a generous amount, it’s still bewildering that no other options are being made available at launch. Still, it should be noted that the reintroduction of the microSD slot adds that level of utility that went missing with last year’s Galaxy S6.

Camera

One of the best in the game gets better with low-light superiority.

Oh man, this is where things get really juicy for the Samsung Galaxy S7! In true fashion, the Galaxy line has always been relevant when it comes to camera performance – so there’s no treading away from that distinguished fact. While it’s certainly no surprise to us that a camera’s performance isn’t indicative solely on how many pixels are crammed into it, many people are led to believe otherwise, crazy as it may seem. Based on its track record, you’d think that Samsung would be reluctant to change that trend, since each successive device since the beginning kept on upping the amount of megapixels. That, though, changes here with the S7.

Going from a 16-megapixel sensor last year with the S6, Samsung has decided to go down a notch, and instead, focus on the size of the pixels themselves – while also being more attentive where cameras struggle the most – low light. With that in mind, the S7 features a fresh 12-megapixel 1/2.5” sensor with large, 1.4 micron pixels, which, in combination with a very wide aperture of f/1.7, results in a camera that is able to collect 95% more photons than its predecessor. All of this indicates an improvement in picture quality with low-light scenarios.

Not only that, but the new sensor also employs a Dual Pixel technology for faster and more accurate autofocus, similarly to what's found in some premium DSLRs. This is made possible thanks to the fact that now each pixel of the camera sensor features two diodes that assist with the camera's focusing process. The previous generation Galaxy S smartphone also had focus pixels for phase-detection AF, but those were way fewer – less than 5% of its camera pixels were used for focusing. Now, a total of 100% of the sensor pixels are used for focusing, which makes the process much faster. Meanwhile, the front-facing camera seems to have been left out of the specs love because it’s still a 5-megapixel snapper.

Funny we mention that, just because the camera interface doesn’t see a dramatic facelift in how it operates. That’s not a terrible thing per se, since it’s rich with various shooting modes that consist of selective focus, panorama, video collage, a live YouTube broadcast (first introduced by the Note 5), slow motion, virtual shot, food, and hyperlapse. And not surprisingly, there’s the Pro mode that hardcore shutter bugs will be delighted to find once again. However, the ability to customize advanced parameters is still only available to snapshots – there’s no true video manual mode yet for the Galaxy line.

SHOT ON GALAXY S7

The beauty about the S7’s camera is that it works exceptionally well on the automatic mode – the way that most people go. There’s never a missed opportunity, especially considering how unbelievably fast it is at running the camera app via the quick launch camera feature, to pressing the on-screen shutter button to take the shot.

Image Quality

Absolutely breathtaking! That’s the consensus we have after combining over the samples we’ve captured using the S7’s brand new 12-megapixel camera. Everywhere we look, there’s no shortage of beautiful compositions filled with plenty of fine details, bold looking colors, and a nice handling of dynamic range. The S7 lives up to its purported claim of being a stellar performer.


First, let’s talk about the samples taken under the ideal conditions – you know, those with plenty of sun outdoors. Compositions appear crisp and attentive, but there’s still an adequate amount of fine details that permit cropping later on without a huge loss in quality. It even does a bang up job in dealing with exposure, as highlights and shadows are properly compensated to deliver well-exposed shots. Cementing its superiority, colors come out vibrant and radiant – though, compositions tend to exude a greenish hue.

While it’s a fantastic performer on the automatic, the other modes definitely diversify its portfolio, which has a deep appeal to a wide array of users. Just as before, it’s quick and effective at panning for panoramic shots – then stitching together almost seamlessly. HDR shots, thankfully, aren’t too artificialized as we’ve seen in the past, seeing that the contrast boost isn’t as overworked.

The biggest focus for Samsung, however, relates to the camera’s much hyped low-light performance. Thanks to its larger camera sensor pixels and wider aperture than before, the Galaxy S7 is expected to leave quite the mark when it comes to low-light photography, as the characteristics we mentioned should all lend to brighter than usual shots. Well, being brighter is one thing, but it’s another when most devices under low light tend to be compromised by the amount of noise, graininess, and splotchy details in their shots. For the Galaxy S7, though, Samsung has effectively kept those usual suspects at bay – wherein it’s able to command a high level of crispness. Accompanying the appealing details, colors retain their sense of vibrancy when the lighting is minimal. If more is needed, the phone’s LED flash casts a potent punch, even at a far distance, without overexposing or distorting colors.

Video Quality

A top-performer with its still shot quality, the Galaxy S7 also does nicely with video recording on the automatic. Just as before, there are plenty of shooting resolutions to choose from. Whether it’s the pixel crunching 4K UHD mode, or standard 1080p at 30 FPS, there are plenty of good qualities to ogle over. Now, if details are your thing, 4K UHD is the natural choice because it captures the absolute greatest amount of details in the scene – without a whole lot of sharpening layered to the video post-process. Continuous focus is incredibly adept in adjusting on the fly, almost being too fast at times. Our only annoyance, though, relates to the noticeable rolling shutter effect, or wobble, that persists when the phone is abruptly panning left and right.


The other resolutions look pretty darn nice as well, so there’s no shortage of eye candy with them. If you love that over-motion effect, the 1080p 60 FPS is going to suit you well. Oppositely, the 240 FPS slow motion mode at 720p does even better to isolate a short period of time to produce a slick looking slow motion video. And of course, there’s the standard 1080p mode at 30 FPS, which actually produces the most natural, true-to-life results. Movement is pretty steady, as well as the stabilization, but there’s still an effective mixture of sharp details, bold colors, and crisp audio recording to round out its awesome bite.
Again, it’s the kind of phone that works on the automatic. The only thing missing in our opinion that would complete the package, is true manual controls for video recording – much like what the LG V10 offers. We were hoping for Samsung to finally bring that into the mix, but alas, that’s just not in the books.

Multimedia

You’ll have a tough time prying your eyes away when watching videos on this.

The gallery app has all the necessities in viewing and editing stored content on the go. Arranged in layouts such as albums and events, there are still other options to make slideshows and collages with the stored content. Editing, too, is pretty much unchanged from what we were given with its predecessor – boasting the usual basic editing tools, in addition to the various filters it offers.

Gone is the TouchWiz music player that’s been a staple of the Galaxy line, replaced instead by the Google Play Music app for local play, and Samsung’s Milk Music for those who prefer that streaming radio format. Whichever one you go with, there’s one thing that becomes a bit alarming. And that, folks, is the slightly weaker output of the internal speaker than before.

Despite the weaker loudness, there’s no adverse effect to how it actually sounds. Clean and crisp, without too much of that affinity for the lower audio range, there’s a pleasant degree of neutrality – so that not one particular audio range is isolated more than others. Of course, its quality can further be enhanced by tinkering around with some of the equalizer settings that are available.

We’re not overly critical about the weaker internal speaker, because quite frankly, the 3.5mm headphone jacks sees a significant improvement because it now achieves an output of 0.704 V. That’s a big improvement over last year’s reach of 0.53 V, which means that the overall punch is stronger – made better by the fact that audio sounds delightfully clean and crisp.

Continuing to be a great thing for video watching, the S7 doesn’t disappoint mainly due to how its iridescent screen, combined with its fantastic viewing angles and saturation, keeps our eyes glued to what videos are being played. Choosing to go with the adaptive display mode, the screen’s contrast and saturation are automatically adjusted by the phone to reach those ideal viewing levels. And boy is it stunning! Not surprisingly, too, there’s still that multi-tasking aspect with its pop out play mode. It might be regarded as a minor feature for some, but nonetheless, the option to do this is something we appreciate.