Gadgetory

the Titan tech company of the past versus the current juggernaut of the Android ecosystem Samsung this year was on a mission to refine the galaxy line addressing some of the concerns we had with last year's devices Sony this year took a more drastic move away from high-end vanity specs but maintains a premium price point which company has the better strategy for separating you from your cache it's time for a showdown starting with design sony has produced attractive handsets for years now and the Xperia X features the same hard monolith rectangular slab of design we've come to know and love from past Sony phones a samsung over these last two generations has radically improved the galaxy design this year resulting in one of the prettiest phones of the year Samsung has done a terrific job of addressing some of the issues from the s6 curving the back glass and syncing the camera sensor now Sony actually struggles a bit with fit and finish this year as the side panel separates from the phone when pulling out the SIM card tray and these seems at the bottom slightly Mar and otherwise clean look I'm moving to specs samsung didn't push the envelope too far and refining the s6 but the s7 still represents the top mobile technology offerings available this year both Sony and Samsung Sport Qualcomm 820 processors but the Galaxy rocks a terrific quad HD AMOLED screen which is much easier to read outdoors than Sony's 1080p LCD a bug phone Sport 32 gigabytes of storage but the sony whittles back Ram to 3 gigabytes both phones are ip68 water-resistant and battery capacities differ where the galaxy sports a 3000 milliamp hour size and Sony scaled back to a two thousand seven hundred milli amp power cell and all of that Hardware powers two different interpretations on how to customize the Android OS TouchWiz has been streamlined but still influences nearly every aspect of the UI from notification shade to homescreen app drawer to settings menus a Sony maintains some familiar elements like the stock notification shade but there's a bright playful theme applied throughout the interface and we'll call this one a toss-up as beauty is in the eye of the beholder both of these phones are plenty powerful for covering the basics so really testing performance here we've got to move over to something a bit more intense the lower resolution screen doesn't seem to provide much benefit on the Xperia in games like Marvel future fight it's poorly optimized for Qualcomm chipsets and both phones create something of a slideshow at the highest quality but even moving to a game like implosion the Xperia seems to perform about the same if maybe dropping the framerate a bit more than what we see on the galaxy thermal throttling might be an issue when the phone is totally cold and hasn't been used in a while the Xperia benchmark well against the galaxy s7 but after one mission in implosion that performance is significantly reduced the galaxy seems to handle heat better after one mission in the same game a radio management is a small win for the glass packed galaxy's it managed to hold on to Wi-Fi better throughout my home often with around a 2 to 4 decibel advantage over the Xperia and looking at camera tech this is definitely an area where Samsung walks away with a strong victory Sony make some great sensors but the camera app on the Xperia is a bit of a mess and can fight the user a lot in trying to nail down the focus and exposure settings one might want to use also this casing is notorious for running the phone warm and you will quickly see thermal warnings when using the camera Samsung delivers the fastest performing camera of the year terrific autofocus a nicely laid out app with a proper manual mode and the ability to shoot UHD video mind you you can shoot longer clips of UHD video from the Samsung then you can 1080p clips from the Xperia before both phones start running too hot for smooth video capture now Sony might have the higher resolution sensor but with Ross support Samsung also wins the battle for folks who like to edit their photos before sharing now the ideal fight is something of a split decision we generally prefer the front-facing speakers on the Xperia but samsung's headphone jack geeks out a win with better frequency response lower distortion playback and a better signal-to-noise ratio and checking out battery life again the lower resolution screen does little to help Sony and packing a smaller battery into the Xperia running our media test streaming 30 minutes of video over Wi-Fi at 190 lux the Galaxy drained 5% of its battery while the Xperia rained 12 these numbers were mirrored during our real camera review where the Samsung was able to handle shooting samples all day while connected to LTE while the xperia was dead by early afternoon shooting in airplane mode recharge speeds were a bit closer though as our galaxy s7 tops off around 33% of its battery after 30 minutes and the xperia managed a 28% recharge over the same period of time so let's wrap this up where's that leave us between the sony xperia x performance and the Samsung Galaxy s7 this was a tough fight for Sony but this experiment in walking back some of the specs of the Xperia just doesn't vibe well with the price you have to pay double trouble as we've recently covered some of the price cuts on unlocked Galaxy s7 and with a little savvy shopping you can match the price of this Xperia with an s7 edge if you want the bigger battery and here in the United States the Xperia will receive won't even come with a fingerprint sensor omitting a great little convenience feature often will refrain from declaring an outright winner in these comparisons as buying a smart phone is a very personal investment but Sony is asking a lot of us to remain fans of this brand I don't like casually bandying about phrases like bloodbath and maybe I wouldn't use it here but this experience scores precious few wins against a phone which I genuinely enjoy using from Samsung as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe for more reviews and comparisons like these and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for PocketNow i'm juan carlos back now some gadget guy on twitter and instagram and i will catch you all on the next comparison you