Samsung Galaxy S7 review

 Design

While the design of the Galaxy S7 isn't miles away from its predecessor, the Galaxy S6 , Samsung has made a few tweaks that make it a more attractive device overall.

The Galaxy S7 has a 5.1-inch display and a shiny metal and glass body that looks good but picks up fingerprints easily.
The Galaxy S7 has a curved glass back
The most noticeable design difference is that the back is slightly curved rather than completely flat, meaning it sits more comfortably in the hand and is less likely to slip off the table.

Samsung has also shrunk the size of the camera module on the rear of the smartphone, meaning that it doesn't stick out as much from the case.

Despite being water resistant to a depth of roughly 1.5m for 30 minutes - a classification known as IP68 - there are
no ugly rubber caps over the charging ports, like there were on the Galaxy S5.
Instead, the ports are sealed internally, so the water
resistance is integral to the design of the phone.
There is a fingerprint reader over the home button, suggesting that the Galaxy S7 will offer support for Android Pay and Samsung Pay when they come to the UK later this year.

Unfortunately, the fingerprint reader seems to be much less reliable than Apple's Touch ID, and during testing I found myself having to revert to using my passcode a couple of times.

 Display

The Galaxy S7 has an excellent display that is brighter than and more vivid than that of the Galaxy S6, making it easier to view pictures and text on the phone in sunlight.

It also has a handy always-on display feature, that allows users to check the time, date and battery power without having to "wake up" their phone.

Samsung claims that, unlike some other devices that have always-on displays that drain the battery power, the S7 and S7 Edge have super-AMOLED screens, which are
much more power-efficient and only use 1% of the battery every hour.
In my tests, having the always on-display switched on had no noticeable effect on the battery life.

 Camera

Samsung caused some controversy among fandroids by including a 12-megapixel rear camera on the S7, because it was perceived to be a step down from the 16-megapixel
on the Galaxy S6.

However, there's more to cameras than megapixels, and Samsung claims that other enhancements to the camera module mean this doesn't have a negative impact on
photo quality.

The camera's F1.7 lens supposedly makes it particularly well-suited to low-light photography, and the auto focus function allows the lens to instantly focus on moving
objects, resulting in blur-free photos.

I compared the Galaxy S7's camera to that of an iPhone 6s , which also has a 12 megapixel sensor.

While the most noticeable difference was that the Galaxy S7's default setting is a lot more zoomed-in than the iPhone 6s, the Galaxy S7 was also able to capture more
detail in low-light conditions.

The Galaxy S7 pictures also appeared more vibrant, with more true-to-life colours than those taken on an iPhone 6s.

 Battery

Samsung has stepped up its game in terms of battery life with the Galaxy S7.
While the S6 had a 2500 mAh battery, the S7 has a 3000 mAh battery, which Samsung claims has enough juice to watch an entire season of Game of Thrones on a single
charge.

We weren't able to test this theory out in the time we had with the smartphone, but we can confirm that the battery was still going strong after a day and a half of moderate usage.

The Galaxy S7 also comes with a fast charger that allows you to charge the battery to 50% in just 10 minutes, and
reach full power in 130 minutes.

Power and memory

One important feature that Samsung has also reintroduced with the Galaxy S7 is expandable memory.

In order to squeeze expandable memory into the phone without increasing the size, Samsung has expanded the SIM tray to include an SD card holder.

The Galaxy S7 has expandable memory via an SD card The phone supports all SD cards that are currently available, up to a capacity of 200GB, and Samsung said
that they should also be compatible with future SD cards that offer a higher capacity.

However, the one big catch is that Galaxy S7
smartphones sold to customers in the UK and Europe will reportedly contain a slightly slower processor than the one fitted into units sold in other countries.

Phones in the UK will contain Exynos 8809 chips , which are inferior to the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chips that other countries' units will get. This could mean performance is slower than the iPhone
6s, according to analysts from AnTuTu claimed - particularly when it comes to playing graphics-intensive games.

In my tests, there was no obvious lag from the Exynos 8809 chip. Apps loaded quickly and the phone was more than capable of running two apps side-by-side in split-
screen mode.

However, there's no guarantee that this won't become more noticeable as the phone ages - and it feels like a rip- off, given that Brits will be paying the same price for inferior technology.

Verdict

The Galaxy S7 is an extremely attractive phone that presents strong competition to the iPhone 6s.

It shows a progression from the Galaxy S6 range without deviating too far from the design that earned Samsung so much praise last year.