Defeating the Kryptonite of water for smartphones
: By
UPDATE: Our full, in-depth Samsung Galaxy S7 review is now live.
The Samsung Galaxy S7
is official, and while we'd gleaned a fair amount of information about
it in the lead-up to the launch, there were still a few surprises on
offer.
Those included an always-on display as well as some news on the internal storage of the phone.
Samsung also revealed the Galaxy S7 Edge
at the same time with a 5.5-inch dual, curved display that looks
gorgeous in the hand. But let's focus on the straight-edged Galaxy S7
first
Cut to the chase
- What is it? The new flagship phone in Samsung's Galaxy S line.
- When is it out? March 11
- What will it cost? £569, US$199 on a two year contract, AU$1,149
- Read our Samsung Galaxy S7 review
- Check out all the best Samsung Galaxy S7 deals
- Read our Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review
Release date
As you'll have noticed above, the Samsung Galaxy S7 release date has been set for March 11, with pre-orders open now.
Some
retailers are promising to deliver the phone a little earlier if you
pre-order, and some lucky people have already got their shiny new S7 in
their hands.
Price
There's only one storage size of the Galaxy S7 (32GB), so pricing is a much more simple affiar. The key digits are as follows.
In
the UK you're looking at £569 SIM, or you can pick it up from as little
as £49.99 up front on two year deals. In the US, it'll cost $199 on a
two-year contract, but since carriers are phasing out these subsidized
agreements, expect to pay about $27 a month for the handset over the
course of 24 months.
In Australia the S7 is priced at AU$1,149 SIM free.
Design
The design of the Galaxy S7 looks pretty much like that of the Galaxy S6
– or so you'd think when you first lay eyes on it. The phone, from the
front, does have a very similar look, with the metal edges and rounded
corners.
But the rear of the phone has been rounded away (think the S6 Edge's front used on the back) in the same manner as on the Galaxy Note 5, and it feels completely different.
On
top of that, Samsung's brought back the IP68 rating (meaning you can
dunk it in 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes) that we last saw on the Galaxy S5 – but this time, with the more premium design of glass and metal.
It's
still a touch chunkier than other phones on the market, but it feels
good in the hand, and the mix of glass and metal makes it feel like a
phone worth spending a decent amount of cash on.
Screen
Samsung
stuck with the same 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display on the Galaxy S7
as on the S6. It's usually a bad thing when a brand doesn't add anything
to the mix for its phone from one year to the next (we're talking to
you, Apple…) but in this case, last year's screen was so nifty that it
couldn't have been improved on much this year.
Super AMOLED tech
means you're already getting great color reproduction and brilliant
differences between the light and dark elements of the screen – and the
results always seem to impress friends.
The
QHD resolution is pin-sharp too – at 1,440 x 2,560 pixels it's closing
in on a resolution that's so sharp the eye can't ever see the pixels.
It
makes pictures and web pages, in particular, look smooth and clear, and
as OLED technology is self-emitting, the display sits closer to the
glass too. Side by side the two do actually look a little different,
with the Galaxy S7 showing up as a little brighter - Samsung's clearly
optimized the tech while not changing the resolution
Always-on display
While the display technology in the Samsung Galaxy S7 hasn't altered much, the way it's being used has.
Samsung's
decided that it needs another headline feature, and the Always-On
Display seems to be it. You can pretty much guess what this is from the
name: when the phone is in standby it'll either show a clock, your
calendar or some weird pattern.
In fairness to Samsung it does add a level of gloss to the look of
the phone, but it does also draw power. The claim is that it's less than
1% per hour, but that still adds up over the course of a day.
The
claim here is that some users check their phones 150 times a day,
mostly to check the time, and in doing so wake up the phone and start
munching down on power. Whether many people look at the clock that many
times a day is, well, less certain - but Samsung thinks this is a key
way to actually save power by leaving the display on.
The screen
API is also open for developers, meaning you'll be seeing new display
choices in the near future - imagine a WhatsApp message that stays on
the front screen,for example.
Storage
Samsung has now
confirmed the Galaxy S7 is only available in a 32GB model. Considering
that Samsung offered 64GB and 128GB variants in the past, that doesn't
seem like much of an offer.
But in reality it's more than enough,
thanks to the addition of a microSD card slot in the SIM tray –
something Samsung fans have been crying out for over the last 12 months.
However,
while Samsung is claiming that the performance of this card will be
good (in the Galaxy S5 it really slowed down the gallery when you had
loads of photos on it, for instance) there's a slight surprise here:
it's not adoptable
.
What does that mean? Well, with Android Marshmallow on board the
Galaxy S7, in theory Samsung could have used the new Adoptable Storage
feature to take that card, encrypt it and make it part of the internal
storage, enabling you to install apps and such on it as you would on the
built-in storage – essentially giving you a 288GB phone for not a lot
more cash.
Camera
This is an area where Samsung's going to
have to do a lot of work in terms of spending its marketing dollars:
the Galaxy S7 has a 12MP camera, down from the 16MP in the Galaxy S6.
While
that sounds like a downgrade, in reality it's a big change for the
better, thanks to the fact it'll be letting in more light – 25% more,
thanks to the 56% large pixels being used
There's also less strain on the processor, as it doesn't have as
large file sizes to work with – so taking pictures is faster, and images
are sharper.
The autofocus has also been hugely improved, with
Samsung's new dual-pixel sensor technology offering lightning quick
focusing – it seems to be on a par with what Sony's put together in the
Xperia range, so should result in clearer pics even with a shaky hand.
Battery
Power-hungry users will be pleased to learn that Samsung seems to
have put a lot more effort into the battery pack with the Galaxy S7 –
boosting it up from 2550mAh in the S6 (which was actually a reduction
from the S5) to 3000mAh.
While Samsung doesn't have the best track
record when it comes to power management in its phones, the combination
of the improved power management in Android 6 Marshmallow and more mAh
to work with could mean we've finally got a long-lasting Galaxy
flagship.
OS and power
The Galaxy S7 is one of the first Samsung phones to jump to Android 6, which comes pre-installed on the handset.
That's running on top of two different chipsets: the Qualcomm 820 CPU
and Samsung's own Exynos unit plus 4GB of RAM, which means the S7 is
able to handle really meaty tasks like stitching together 360-degree
video on the fly from the new Gear 360 camera.
Both engines offer a
huge amount of power and graphical grunt to make the stuff on the
phone's display shine - with the Exynos nipping ahead in the benchmarks.
Samsung has told techradar that the intention is to use the Snapdragon
820 in US markets, and the Exynos for Europe and most other parts of the
world.
Is it too much power? Probably – and here's hoping the new
Qualcomm chipset doesn't suffer from the same thermal issues as its
predecessor.
Game launcher
The other big feature on show
here is the Game Launcher, a sandboxed area where you can store the
latest gaming titles you've downloaded, and access a suite of tools to
improve your gaming experience.
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