The Galaxy S7 Edge (left) and Galaxy S7 (right).
The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are finally here. Samsung's newest flagships stick pretty close to the Galaxy S6 formula, but they add a brand new SoC—the Snapdragon 820—and bring back some of the features the Galaxy S6 missed out on.
While we liked the Galaxy S6's overall evolution, many people saw the handset as a step backward. Galaxy S5 customers complained that "upgrading" to the Galaxy S6 would mean losing the MicroSD slot, removable battery, water resistance, and Micro USB 3.0 port. In response, Samsung has re-introduced some features from the Galaxy S5 back into the Galaxy S7. The MicroSD slot is back, as is the water resistance. The water resistance is actually improved—you'll no longer have to fiddle with the clunky, unreliable port cover to protect the S7's innards.
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The device still isn't a straight upgrade for Galaxy S5 owners, though. The removable battery isn't making a comeback; it's firmly fixed in place on this latest Galaxy phone. You won't get those USB transfer speeds back either—the Galaxy S7 still has a MicroUSB 2.0 port, making it the last flagship to not upgrade to USB Type C. You're also missing out on an IR blaster, which was present on the Galaxy S5 and S6.
It's hard to nail down an exact price for the Galaxy S7 since Samsung doesn't sell it directly in the US, but the off-contract price from carriers is around $650 to $700 for the 32GB Galaxy S7 and $750 to $800 for the 32GB S7 Edge. That's a very big price tag to live up to, but let's see how it does.
Design and build quality
| SPECS AT A GLANCE: GALAXY S7 & S7 EDGE | |
|---|---|
| SCREEN | S7: 2560×1440 5.1" (577ppi) AMOLED S7 Edge: 2560×1440 5.5" (534ppi) AMOLED |
| OS | Android 6.0 Marshmallow with TouchWiz |
| CPU | US: Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (two 2.15 GHz Kryo cores and two 1.6 GHz Kyro cores) Int'l: Eight-core Exynos 8890 (four 2.3 GHz Mongoose cores and four 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53 cores) |
| RAM | 4GB |
| GPU | US: Adreno 530 Int'l: Mali-T880 MP12 |
| STORAGE | US: 32GB Int'l: 32GB/64GB |
| NETWORKING | Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 GPS |
| PORTS | MicroUSB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone jack |
| CAMERA | 12MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus and OIS, 5MP front camera |
| SIZE | S7: 142.4 x 69.9 x 7.9 mm (5.61 x 2.74 x 0.31 in) Edge: 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7 mm (5.94 x 2.86 x 0.30 in) |
| WEIGHT | S7: 152g (5.36 oz) Edge: 157g (5.54 oz) |
| BATTERY | S7: 3000mAh Edge: 3600mAh |
| STARTING PRICE | S7: ~$700 unlocked Edge: ~$800 unlocked |
| OTHER PERKS | NFC, quick charging, wireless charging, heart rate sensor, notification LED, IP68 water resistance |
Last year the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge launched at the same time with the same 5.1-inch screen size, but one screen was flat and the other screen was curved. This year, the curved Galaxy S7 Edge jumps up to 5.5-inches, while the flat Galaxy S7 stays at 5.1 inches. The bigger phone also comes with a bigger battery—3600mAh versus the 3000mAh battery on the vanilla S7. We assume a bunch of market research went into this, but it certainly complicates the shopping decision.
The Galaxy S7 maintains the same basic style and construction as the Galaxy S6—it's still a glass sandwich with an aluminum band. This is a style that still feels a lot better than anything from Samsung's plastic days, but it does contain twice as much fragile glass as a normal smartphone.
The Galaxy S7 isn't purely a spec bump, though. Samsung has made some tweaks to the S6 design. On the back of the flat-screened Galaxy S7, the long edge of the device is curved to fit your hand, which brings the design in line withthe Galaxy Note 5. The curved sides here are less dramatic than on the back of the Note 5, but it still makes the device more comfortable to hold than the flat-backed Galaxy S6. The Galaxy S7 Edge even incorporates a slight curve to the sides on the back now, making it a little more comfortable than the sharp joint between the back and the screen on the previous model.
On the S7, Samsung has curved the perimeter of the display glass inward very slightly. It changes nothing about the feel; instead it reflects the light differently to give the device a more rounded look. The camera bump on the back has been slimmed down considerably, but it still isn't flush with the back of the device. The rest of the design looks near-identical to the Galaxy S6, save for the smaller camera hump. The Galaxy S7 is also about a millimeter thicker than the Galaxy S6—if it gives us more battery life, we are 100 percent in favor of thicker phones.
Samsung brought back the water resistance of the Galaxy S5, but it managed to do so without any of the negatives that it introduced in the older phone. The Galaxy S5 bezels were beefier than the Galaxy S4, a change that we felt madethe S5 design look like a step backward. The water resistance was to blame for the S5's bezel size, but on the S7, Samsung managed to add water resistance without expanding the bezels by any appreciable amount.
The S7 also manages to be water-resistant without the annoying charging port flap of the Galaxy S5. As teardowns have shown, the waterproofing method of the Galaxy S7 is the same as the Galaxy S5—there's no special internal coating or anything, just rubber gaskets to keep the water out—but on the S7, the gaskets are inside the phone rather than hanging on exterior port covers. The Galaxy S7's USB port is exposed yet still water-resistant because of a rubber gasket blocking off the port from the inside of the phone. The SIM tray has a rubber gasket, too, while the speaker is protected with a water-repellant mesh.
An exposed USB port means the port could potentially have water in it when you go to charge it, but luckily the S7 will detect this and display an error message (rather than risk sending voltage to places it should go and frying itself or the thing you plug it into). Overall the water resistance is a big improvement over the S5. There are fewer covers and thus fewer things to go wrong. Only the rarely opened SIM/MicroSD tray needs to be sealed up.
About that USB port—it's still Micro USB Type B rather than the reversible, possibly faster USB Type C port. Samsung's choice to stick with the older, slower option this late is a bit of a shock. USB Type C's mainstream debut on theChromebook Pixel 2 and 2015 Macbookhappened almost a year ago, and Type C phones started hitting US soil almost seven months ago. Samsung is the company that fitted the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S5 with a ridiculous Micro USB 3.0 port that was so early it could "interfere with data or calls" while in use. We would think a traditionally spec-sheet-focused company would be eager to adopt USB Type C, but it has made the last major flagship with Micro USB.
We'd imagine Samsung's Gear VR is to blame. The phone-based VR headset plugs into the Micro USB port on the bottom of a Samsung phone, making it compatible with the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, and—because the port didn't change—the Galaxy S7. Changing the S7 to a Type-C plug would have required Samsung to make a new Gear VR, and we'd guess the company wasn't ready to do that. Samsung is actually offering a free Gear VR headset to every Galaxy S7 customer in the US and UK, which suggests that maybe it has an excess of Gear VR stock. Switching to Type-C would have made selling through the current stock of Gear VRs even more challenging. If you're going to buy a Galaxy S7 and can score a Gear VR for free, great! We wouldn't recommend spending cash on one with the expectation for it to last very long, though. Upgrading to USB Type-C is inevitable for Samsung, and then users will need a new Gear VR.
The one item you might miss from other flagships, or even older Samsung phones, is the IR blaster. Samsung shipped TV remote capabilities on the Galaxy S6 and S5 but left it off the S7. It's a strange omission on a device that costs a whopping $700, especially when Samsung is still including less useful bells and whistles like a heart rate monitor.
We don't really feel strongly either way about the curved screen on the Galaxy S7 Edge. It doesn't really help or harm the device; it's just one of those "because we can" features that Android OEMs are always so fond of. The curved screen does make holding the phone a little more difficult, since there's a good chance your fingers will contact the side of the screen and press something. It also distorts the sides of apps, which takes some time to get used to.
Storage sadness
Hey look! A MicroSD card!
The return of the MicroSD card might make you think the storage situation on the Galaxy S7 is fantastic, but there is a lot of disappointment here. If you're a US customer, Samsung is only selling the phones with 32GB of storage despite the fact that, internationally, a 64GB exists. There also isn't a 128GB version of the S7, despite the fact that the Galaxy S6 came in 128GB. Again, we're going to assume lots of marketing research went into this decision.
The other storage decision we're really disappointed with is Samsung's decision to remove Android 6.0's awesome "adoptable storage" feature from the Galaxy S7. Adoptable storage allowed you to merge the removable and internal storage into a single, unified pool of storage. After that you could forget about the SD card and store tons of apps, pictures, and video—the system handled everything. The only problem is that adoptable storage formats and encrypts the card so that only that specific phone can read it, meaning you can't swap the card to another device.
Samsung said it disabled the feature because "we believe that our users want a microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices." Of course, the card could still be read by a computer with a USB cable, so by "transferring files" Samsung means physically removing the MicroSD card and sticking it into a card reader. Never mind that adoptable storage is an optional feature and that users who choose to can still use their microSD cards the old-fashioned way. Samsung defends its decision. "We think that our model of using microSD for mass storage is more in-line with our owners' desires and expectations for how microSD should behave," the company said. We'd prefer that Samsung leave this sort of decision up to its users.
If you're brave, there are command line workarounds that can format the SD card to adoptable storage. But while that works now, there's no telling if a Samsung update will render your data unreadable.
