Gadgetory

the Galaxy s6 active blew me away with its strong battery life great camera and rugged build quality and as my wife's daily driver has actually continued to impress me with better than expected software updates provided you perform them manually if you're not an AT&T user its successor the s7 active blew me away with its brick-like size and weight and unbelievably ugly gold front bezel but then again maybe there is more to this ugly duckling than meets the eye that's all hope so Coursera boasts unrivaled comfort and universal compatibility on its void surround headset featuring a genuine Dolby 7.1 headphone USB adapter check out the link in the video description to learn more I don't want to bore you so let's get the specifications out of the way really fast here the galaxy s7 active rocks a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU there is no X no spurgeon for some markets this time around and Adreno 530 GPU and 4 gigs of ram making it competitive with a nearly identical to plus or minus a Giga Ram here are there any other flagship smartphone on the market on the back is AD brand skin so you can't see the abhorrent color scheme you're welcome along with the 12 megapixel rear camera that I know and love a two-tone flash and wireless charging under the hood on top is a noise cancelling microphone and a headphone jack in my preferred position on the right is a nice clicky lock button and a tray for a single SIM card and microSD card this can be used to extend the 32 gigs of built-in storage on the left is a volume rocker that feels good but is regrettably right across from the lock button derp and the active key something I wish Samsung and other manufacturers for that matter would add a lot more of to their smartphones because this thing is great it acts as a shutter button when the camera app is open and there are three different actions bound to single double and long presses if you don't care about activity zone where you don't have DirecTV or whatever you can change them to open any app you'd like now I'd still love to see more flexibility here like being able to directly call a contact turn on the flashlight activate my mobile hotspot or whatever else but it's something I found myself using a lot even the way it is now on the bottom is the main microphone and a microUSB charging port hopefully a new VR headset comes soon so Samsung can switch to type C and a bottom mounted speaker that is decidedly status-quo I'd like to see everyone taking HTC's approach with an upgraded earpiece speaker giving the phone not necessarily stereo but dual speaker sound next to the earpiece is the same 5-megapixel selfie camera from the s7 so it's good if a little bit too wide making noses or other facial features appear oversized under it is the 5.1 inch Gorilla Glass 4 covered 2560 by 1440 AMOLED screen that continues to impress me with it's not overly saturated colors considering this is a Samsung OLED we're talking about and fantastic visibility in all conditions including direct sunlight beneath that yeah okay so these are hardware buttons they're still here they're a bit of a love it or hated thing personally I got used to them pretty fast and it was nice to not have to worry about pressing back with my palm while reaching across the keyboard or accidentally closing videos all the time in landscape mode but your mileage may vary alright so last time around the big draw to the active model was the IP 68 ingress protection rating compared to the s6 is complete lack of official water resistance that's why I loved it so much even though it lacked a fingerprint sensor something that has made it feel surprisingly obsolete in the last year as more and more third-party applications LastPass is one that I use multiple times every day are making use of this feature fortunately the middle home button has won this time around making the active a full no compromises s7 experience which is good because the regular models picked up damn impressive water resistance this time around with rs7 beating out offerings from Sony and kaya Sarah in this sea water depth challenge which you can check out right here let's talk other trade-offs you lose the sex appeal for sure the active is noticeably heavier and thicker with bigger bezels but in addition to water and dust proof Ness the active is rated for drop resistance though it should be noted that if you drop anything enough times it will eventually break and it features a whopping four thousand milliamp hour non removal battery which combined with Samsung's good power management in the latest TouchWiz resulted in me making it as close to two full days as I ever have with a smartphone since I started reviewing them about a hundred and seventy-five percent of a day unfreaking real it is a TNG exclusive so 4G band support is a little more limited because it doesn't need such broad compatibility but I didn't run into any issues with reception on my carrier that stupid message that was always in the tray with the s6 active when it first launched is gone and most of the ATT stock apps can actually be fully disabled this time so they don't continue to run in the background TouchWiz continues to improve so I don't have a ton of comments there other than keep up the good work ladies and gentlemen and the camera is the same camera that continues to outperform pretty much everything else in terms of launch speed shutter speed image quality low-light I love the s7 s camera so then is the active better than the regular s7 is it worth the price Delta well that's actually hard to say but battery life is amazing that was the only thing that kept the droid turbo ahead of the s6 active for me last time around and software support for the s6 active has been confidence-inspiring even if you need to use ADB to upgrade it outside of America but there is one nagging issue one that I thought I was imagining when I couldn't reproduce it on camera and left it out of my s6 active review both the s7 active and its predecessors touch screens leg occasionally the most obvious symptom of which is double presses especially fast ones resulting in a long press while typing frustratingly I was once again unable to reproduce it on camera due to the intermittent nature of the issue but especially side by side with the touch latency optimization of the HTC 10 it is noticeable other than that this phone is the absolute no compromises bomb and it gets a very strong recommendation especially if you're the kind of person who was going to buy an s7 and then spend a hundred bucks on a battery bank and a rugged case anyway speaking of accessories for your phone especially ones that save you from incidental dings and scratches debrand skins head over to D brand comm we've got a link in the video description and check out their high quality precision cut vinyl skins they've got them available for phones tablets game consoles game controllers and even laptop computers these days and the best thing about D brand aside from the fact that they fit perfectly and are easy to apply and they're high-quality and they stay on and all that stuff you'd expect from a vinyl skin but unfortunately don't usually get the best thing is the configurator with the configurator you can see all the different zones that you can change the colors of and you can swap them out in real time building the perfect device that is exactly your style and that perhaps no one else would even want so check it out again that's linked in the video description d brand.com they're great guys over there and they make great skins and they ship worldwide so thanks for watching guys if this video sucks you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed maybe buy an s7 active over at Amazon we've got a link down there in the video description or some other phone-a ultimately it makes very little difference to me or even consider supporting us by buying a cool shirt like this one are joining our community forum where 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