Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android authority and for the last few years Samsung has produced a more rugged version of their Galaxy S flagship so it wasn't too much of a surprise that the galaxy s7 received the same treatment so let's take a look at the galaxy s7 active and see exactly what their rugged smartphone offers this year the galaxy s7 active shares a lot of similarities to the normal galaxy s7 and we'll talk about what those similarities are but it also has a lot of characteristics that make it different so I suppose the easiest way to talk about this phone is to talk about what's different and what's still the same the biggest difference is obviously the way this phone looks and the way it feels in the hand compared to the regular galaxy s7 instead of an all glass and metal design the s7 active is made of a rubberized body that's also quite thick and honestly a little bit bulky but that's usually to be expected when you're dealing with a rugged phone the corners have been reinforced and are much beefier compared to the rest of the phone which makes sense as most impacts from drops tend to occur on the corners the rugged exterior makes the phone military 810g shock resistant against drops which in layman's terms means this phone can take a pretty big beating it's not indestructible by any means because you can still break it if you try hard enough but it's going to be able to withstand your average drop better than most other smartphones it can take a lot more of them - which is awesome from people who drop their phones a lot or you just simply need a phone that isn't so fragile the best way to describe the s7 active is that it feels like an s7 inside of a case and it even has a front lip to protect the screen just like you would get with most cases the screen is the same 5.1 inch quad HD AMOLED screen from the regular s7 so it's super vibrant contrast II and bright but unlike the s7 the s7 actives display is supposedly shatterproof up to 5 feet drops at least according to Samsung it's made of Gorilla Glass 4 which we know can break so shadow resistant is probably more appropriate term has a plastic layer on top of the glass to make that happen it's basically just a screen protector and the biggest downside to this that I wasn't really a fan of is that it scratches super easily another difference that you'll find on the s7 active is the physical Hardware buttons so instead of capacitive keys you have real tactile buttons for backhand recent apps and they definitely took some getting used to I'm not going to lie but they are very clicky and easy to press the home button is the typical Samsung home button but unlike last year's s6 active you're not losing out on the fingerprint sensor this time around and it works just the same as it does on the s7 so no real surprises there the majority of the buttons and ports like the power button mark USB port volume rockers and the speaker are in the exact same places as the s7 with the exception of the headphone jack which got moved to the top on the active you'll also notice an extra button sitting above the volume rockers that Samsung calls the active key it's completely user definable for up to three different actions so you have your standard short press a long press and a double press that can set to open up any application that you want and if you need to set it to work when the phone is locked which makes it even more useful the last big difference with the s7 active and probably the most important difference is the battery it's got a massive 4000 milliamp hour battery that's even larger than the s7 edges and if you love the battery life on the s7 edge you'll love the battery life on the s7 active even more I've used this phone pretty heavily with a ton of gaming and hours and hours of youtube and I still had a hard time getting this phone to die within the days worth of usage which is pretty incredible and definitely not a bad problem to have it's pretty safe to say that the s7 active has awesome battery life and it's probably one of the longest lasting phones I've ever used so I have no doubt that this phone to get a good two days on more casual use as far as everything else goes it's pretty much identical to the regular s7 it has microSD card expansion for extra storage and it's ip68 dust and water resistance you can dunk it or submerge it in water and it'll still work just fine there's a Snapdragon 820 inside with 4 gigabytes of RAM and unless you've been living under a rock you should already know that the s7 is a really fast phone and performance is no different on the ax the camera is the same 12 megapixel sensor with F 1.7 aperture and that lightning-fast dual pixel autofocus so there's no difference in picture quality here between the active and the standard s7 the images are sharp vibrant contrast II and the camera performs well in pretty much all lighting conditions you can still double tap the home button to launch directly into the camera and the camera software for the most part is pretty much the same it has all the same features and camera modes from the s7 like selective focus and live broadcasts but there's an aqua mode made specifically for the s7 active that lets you use the active key to take photos and the volume rockers to record video when you're using the active underwater it's running on Android 6.0 marshmallow with Samsung's TouchWiz so there's no real differences here with the software either the only problem with the software is that because the active is an AT&T exclusive it comes with a crap-ton of bloatware from all of AT&T phone services to apps like Lookout Security the Yellow Pages and DirecTV they aren't really trying to hide it either because on first boot you're greeted with a home screen full of bloat and unfortunately none of it can be uninstalled and that's really the biggest downside to the s7 active I think a lot of people really love to get their hands on a more rugged version of the s7 but with it being locked down to 80 not everyone is going to be able to and you would think by now Samsung would make this phone available on more carriers honestly there isn't much to not like about it it's not the prettiest looking phone obviously so it isn't going to be for everyone but the active wasn't meant to be a good-looking phone if you want a good-looking phone go for the regular s7 or even the s7 edge but if you want everything that the s7 offers with an exterior that can take a lot of punishment and a long lasting battery then the s7 active is a pretty good choice carrier exclusivity aside as always thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed this review of the s7 active if you did please give it a thumbs up down below and also leave your comments on what you think of the s7 active down below and subscribe to the channel as well if you haven't already so you don't miss out on our future videos and feel free to follow us on Twitter Instagram snapchat 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