Gadgetory

it's Josh of agar from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the Samsung Galaxy s7 now as is the case these days you can also find a full written detailed review at Android authority comm that will go through all of the specs and also give the opinion of Norrath Gandia and my own you can also find picture galleries of the phone so you could see in all its glory and camera samples of the Samsung Galaxy s7 right here and you can also find a bunch of benchmarks because we tested the Snapdragon 820 version with the exceed O's 88-90 version speaking of those processors why don't we go ahead and get all the specs out of the way first while Samsung have finally done it they have perfected their design language taking the same metal frame and the dual glass panels from last year with the galaxy s6 they have further refined the design and now have made one of the most accessible phones ever the 5.1 inch screen size really helps with a handling but the bezels on the sides are also very respectable but it's really those curves on the back of the phone that make all of the difference the phone just sits so beautifully in the hand and it's really easy to maneuver around especially with one hand going left to right with the phone is really easy and then minimal hand gymnastics are needed in order to get to the top pretty much all of the elements are about the same here you have the home button up front that has the fingerprint reader embedded underneath that is also a little bit more flush with the body but it's really the camera on the back that's no longer protruding out so much that really shows just how more sleek this phone is than last year the phone is about a millimeter narrower from last year's Galaxy s6 but is also about a millimeter thicker now that is to make room for the curve on the back but also in order to provide room for the 3000 milliamp hour battery underneath especially considering everything that this phone is capable of doing it's great that the body the first thing you see of this phone happens to be really attractive and then you get the phone in the hand and it happens to be one of the most accessible handling phones that are out there right now the display of the galaxy s7 is a returning Super AMOLED display coming in a quad HD resolution but it has high pixel densities given the five point one inch size Super AMOLED displays bringing pretty much everything you would expect super punched out and highly saturated colors and also that whites aren't necessarily true whites because unlike an LCD there is no backlight on here what I did not like about the display is the fact that it requires a lot of managing on the brightness if you were to take the brightness slider and bring it all the way down to the left it's almost as if you're turning off the display I typically have to have it around 40% just to keep it legible especially when indoors and then if I go outside I have to crank it all the way to a hundred just to make sure that it is perfectly visible this kind of managing of the screen brightness especially for better battery life is just a little bit annoying and definitely a little more cumbersome than usual the main addition when it comes to the display is the fact that it can be always on when the phone is in standby a small graphic will come up showing you either the time or a calendar or a few graphics which are predefined now it may not be the most useful feature at least not in its first iteration right now but I do have to admit that if I'm trying to figure out what day a particular date lands on in the next month it is nice to have the calendar on at all times all in all however you still get the same quality from a Super AMOLED screen that you would expect on a Samsung device the thing is we've seen a lot of AMOLED displays on plenty of other devices over the last year so it got me thinking maybe because AMOLED is becoming so proliferated maybe we're just more accustomed to seeing these oversaturated colors but in performance I have to tell you that I have been using the Exynos 88-90 version of the galaxy s7 as my daily driver and for that matter we have a bunch of benchmarks where we are comparing it to the Snapdragon 820 version which I did receive recently in order to see what the differences are between the two but in performance I really have had no issues with the galaxy s7 especially considering some of the new transitions put into TouchWiz it also makes perfect sense that Samsung have really optimized their processing package for their own software and it definitely feels like so and in terms of gaming I do have one quick thing to mention there is the water cooling that is available with the processor in the galaxy s7 and though we're not able to really test that in real time I can tell you that under heavy load in my case playing Final Fantasy 9 for extended periods of time I did not feel the phone get really all that warm at all it did not get as hot as some other devices might have especially ones more recently and ultimately it didn't feel uncomfortable to have the phone for extended periods of gaming in Hardware the first thing we can talk about is a returning feature from the galaxy s5 water and dust resistance that means that the phone could get wet and you just have to take a towel to it and it should be perfectly fine to go the only place that water will actually affect is the speaker grille on the bottom it will muddy out all of the audio at least until it dries out that said however the speaker is not really anything to boast about it is still pretty much average maybe just a little bit below average considering we have plenty of better speakers with let's say front-facing or even dual stereo placement nowadays which leads us to a feature that is returning in the galaxy s7 that I think everybody was really excited about expandable storage we've already taken advantage of it with a SanDisk 200 gigabyte microSD card that we put in on day one and even though I'm not necessarily the type of user to use up 32 gigabytes of on-board storage all that quickly it is nice to know that when that is used up I still have 200 gigabytes more that I could use for photos videos and music and that leads us to the battery the battery is a 3000 milliamp hour unit inside of the galaxy s7 and it's not removable but with this unibody and very sleek design that is kind of okay-- on very heavy days I'm able to get screen on time of about three and a half hours but if I'm using the phone more normally I can get up to 4 maybe even 5 hours of screen on time without any problems nonetheless however if you are a more moderate user you could probably stretch out the battery life of the galaxy s7 to a solid 2 days but there is still fast charging support and the micro USB port on the bottom provides that it does not have USB type-c which might feel like a step back from what's supposed to be the future of Android but we do think that the reason for this is so that the galaxy s7 can still tap into VR platforms like the gear VR but now we can talk about the camera down to 12 megapixels from the 16 that was in the galaxy s6 in the note 5 after it's now 12 megapixels might seem a little bit poultry these days but the reason for it is actually quite sound the pixels themselves are made bigger 1.4 microns to be exact and they will provide better low-light performance but before I talk about that we do have to mention the front-facing camera it does provide some really good quality selfies so for those of you who want to take self-portraits more often then the five megapixel shooter up front will be able to do the job but what I really like about the front-facing camera is that it can record 2k or quad HD video and that will make it really good for any vloggers out there or anyone that just wants to take some videos of themselves other modes include slow motion panorama and a couple of other modes that you may or may not use but the app itself is pretty easy to use even if the controls might get somewhat overwhelming at times especially if you get into the pro mode you do get shutter speed control and the white balance is available in Kelvin readings 4k video recording is available but as is the case or has been the case for the last year if you use 4k video recording you won't be able to take advantage of some the enhancements like for example video stabilization but oh is is able to help a little bit with these videos and overall they have come out quite nice now the pictures of the galaxy s7 are going to be smaller than that of the galaxy s6 that's because of the 12 megapixels but you also lose some of the detail from moving away from 16 megapixels now this doesn't mean that the photos aren't necessarily sharp especially if you take it for what it is the photos look really great it's only when you really zoom in that you can see that not only are the writings a little bit less sharp but there's also some noise reduction trying to compensate for that the sharpness is a little bit lower because of noise reduction and I actually found that the photos aren't necessarily so oversaturated what I did like is that the HDR mode requires you to actually use it in HDR situations it's not just going to add a bunch of saturation and blob up the shadows of every single photo instead you will see a difference only when you're in high contrast situations otherwise if you have HDR Auto on then you'll be able to just let the guess work be done by the phone there are a couple of caveats with this camera however if you go into more lower life situations the phone on auto mode does tend to go warmer with the color temperature now that makes everything have sort of a yellowish or maybe even an orange hue on everything so you just have to keep that in mind when using the auto mode you can always go into the pro mode and compensate for that using the white balance slider of course ultimately the camera of the galaxy s7 is everything that you would want only somewhat enhanced with the lower megapixel count and the larger pixels that makes for better low-light performance but the issue with that is that in broad daylight shots in those situations when you're out and about and the lighting is perfect you want to losing a little bit of that sharpness because you're losing detail going from for less megapixels but considering just how fast it is to use this camera by just double tapping the home button and then getting right into the camera it is a very good companion to have on the daily as a camera shooter now we can get into software and I do have one thing to mention before we get going the option to turn off the app drawer in the galaxy labs area of the settings is not found in the Snapdragon 820 Verizon phone that I was using for testing as well now we don't know if this is going to be the case for all of the Galaxy s7 or the s7 edges in the West but we wanted to make sure that we mentioned it to you so you can take it for what it is now there aren't too many new additions in the software other than a Games launcher and tool essentially the games launcher will allow for all of the games that you have installed to be put into one particular place and when playing in your game you can have a games tool that can lock the recent and back capacitive keys and provide you easy access to a few functions while within your game multitasking is still pretty easy on TouchWiz as well with the multi window capability and also the pop-up view that shrinks down most windows so you can drag it around and have overlaid windows on top of your workspace that said however on a 5.1 inch screen there's not really too much real estate to be able to do all of that you are able to use it if you really need to but ultimately the larger 5.5 inch s7 edge is probably better suited for that multitasking deal the galaxy s7 is available now at all ranger carriers and will come in at the more premium price for flagships that you would typically find either on a contract or for about $700 or more for an unlocked device and so there you have it the samsung galaxy s7 in addressing the issues that came up in the galaxy s6 last year they've been able to create a smartphone that just might be accessible to pretty much anybody especially if you're a fan of the galaxy s6 but you thought it was missing a few features this just might be the perfect smartphone for you but there are some more implications behind the galaxy s7 in the era of microUSB Samsung just might have shown us what the perfect smartphone could look like and in doing so they've been able to show us what might be the final evolution of this era of smartphones this is a turning point for smart phone technology as we move into a world of USB type-c and also modular designs and hopefully more out-of-the-box thinking but until all of that gets hashed out you just might have one of the best phones available right here in the samsung galaxy s7 as always thank you guys very much for watching and hope you enjoyed this review of the Samsung Galaxy s7 it is an incredible device and even if it's not necessarily unique or different compared to last year's phones it is still one of the most reliable phones that you can probably have on the daily stay tuned to Android Authority for all of the coverage of the galaxy s7 including a camera shootout that will go in more detail about the camera then you can see that in the description below and also as part of our coverage on galaxy s7 keep it tuned here for that and even more head on over to Andrew authority comm for all of the best content download our application as you can see over in the corner so you can keep up with everything Android authority and then from there you can stick around and subscribe to channel if you haven't already and like all of these videos because we are your source for all things Android