Gadgetory

it's been unboxed it's been compared to the iPhone 6s and we've dug deep into the camera performance now it's time to see what all the fuss is about I'm Juan Carlos bag now for pocket now and here's our full review of the Samsung Galaxy s7 brought to you by debrie a new galaxy smartphone will always generate a lot of discussion walking around the hardware our review unit is an AT&T branded device powered by a Qualcomm 820 chipset 4 gigabytes of RAM on tap backed up by 32 gigabytes of internal storage and this year sees the return of microSD card expansion to add up to another 200 gigabytes of storage space the non removable battery has been bumped up to a 3000 milliamp hour capacity and will cover runtime a bit later in this video the front face holds the 5.1 inch quad HD AMOLED display the bottom chin is home to the hardware and navigation controls and the fingerprint scanner built into the home button the top of the front faces where we'll find a respectable phone speaker and the 5-megapixel selfie camera the side volume and power keys have a terrific clicky action the bottom edge still looks a bit iPhone inspired with speaker holes microUSB port and the headphone jack but all of these ports are terrifically finished and well balanced on the phone body many were hoping to get USB C but maybe that will arrive on the note 6 later this year the back of the phone is where we'll find the 12 megapixel camera and heart rate monitor yo metal and glass is sexy Samsung delivered a striking look for their phones last year this year we see this aesthetic refined no revolutionary changes but some subtle tweaks to button down Samsung's design language we could call this a note mini if it had support for an S Pen the flat sides from the Galaxy S six are gone in favor of a curved rear plate the new metal edges scooping to accentuate the back glass and the camera has been sunk into the back of the phone surprisingly well it's almost flush with the heart rate monitor these materials are prone to fingerprint smudges but the gold platinum color does a respectable job of hiding them until you hit the phone with some light of course the s7 is a millimeter thicker than the s6 but height and width have actually been trimmed by about mmm the overall feel in the hand is excellent even for someone with little hobbit hands and the form factor here gets surprisingly close to the iPhone 6s which has a noticeably smaller screen hardware improvements are more than skin-deep though the s7 is ip68 water-resistant which means it should survive being submerged in up to five feet of water for up to 30 minutes this is by no means a rugged phone but it should easily handle the occasional dunk or spill looking at the display there's really no competition for AMOLED screens at the moment unmatched contrast with inky blacks and a satisfyingly juicy saturation out of the bots the adaptive mode produces colors a touch warm for my tastes especially yellows and reds but moving to the basic mode delivers excellent display accuracy the combination of high brightness and contrast also makes this phone screen one of the easiest to read and bright light every pixel on an AMOLED screen makes its own light which helps minimize the power draw from features like the always-on display when the screen is off you'll self have at a glance access to the date-time battery and your messages the fingerprint scanner has been improved and the s7 recognizes prints faster than the s6 it replaces the bottom position can still be a bit more difficult to reach when using the phone one-handed especially opposite rear mounted fingerprint scanners now reading through comments from our iPhone comparison from viewers with tips on how to better train the phone we have improved recognition from a side thumb scan but the galaxy s7 scanner still isn't as fast or as flexible as what Huawei includes with mid-range errs like the G x8 now moving over to software how nice it is to fire up a phone with marshmallow installed out of the box and TouchWiz is running on top of Google's OS Samsung skin isn't nearly as garish as it was several years ago the candy colored icons have been toned down but if the default theme still bothers you a replacement is easily installed there are a bunch of customizations baked into TouchWiz the notification tray including scrolling shortcuts to wireless and power saving features we're waiting on Android n to deliver native split-screen multitasking but until then Samsung has the most complete solution for using two programs on your screen at the same time and the s Evan has a huge number of options for gestures and one-handed use even people with the most petite paws a triple click on the home button should shrink the screen enough to use everything with one thumb my gripes about app drawer management remain though the s Evan won't automatically alphabetize newly installed apps you'll have to keep manually hitting this A to Z button and for some reason the AT&T flavor of this phone has removed the single column settings menu that I prefer I don't know why paging through these tabs makes me so cranky but it does between Samsung and AT&T there's also quite a bit of stuff pre-installed Amazon apps Facebook plenty and uber then Samsung's collection of services s voice s health milk music gear Samsung pay and lastly a tease collection of Locker protect plus two direct tv apps drive mode my AT&T and the usage manager none of these can be properly uninstalled but most can be disabled throwing unused services into a folder is one solution but if you organize alphabetically folders are thrown into the first slot on your app drawer but for mobile gamers the galaxy's game center is a handy way to not only launch titles but ensure that your gameplay won't be disrupted by obnoxious facebook notifications for those who like to share gameplay videos the ability to record footage will certainly be appreciated the galaxy s7 performs daily tasks very well it's quick enough sliding through menus and home screens even with TouchWiz customizations you'll rarely be kept waiting long for apps to load and while there's always room to refine multitasking performance out of the box here is lightyears ahead of the mess we originally saw in the galaxy s6 the s Evan is still a bit more aggressive about killing background tasks than some competitors but you won't feel like you're constantly relaunching every app from scratch the Qualcomm 820 chipset benchmarks really well but we can't see tremendous differences between it and the Exynos last used on the s6 edge+ or note 5 that's not a bad thing but performance here feels like more of a lateral move than direct improvement daily driver aspects like launching the camera or unlocking the phone feel a bit quicker but a few of our more demanding games struggled to keep up the same buttery smooth frame rate the Qualcomm 820 will get warm as your the phone especially while charging but we're nowhere near the kind of heat which can be generated from an HTC One m9 on a Qualcomm 810 cruisin around Southern California on 18 T's Network we're getting excellent signal reception on average we're seeing around the two decibel advantage over the LG v10 and closer to a four decibel advantage over the iPhone 6s the blend of metal and glass doesn't seem to be interfering with cell tower connections and we get great data speeds in areas with good coverage phone calls come through loud enough on the earpiece and I haven't had any complaints from callers about the audio being sent from the phone so that's good enough for me but speaking of audio speaker playback seems fairly unchanged from the galaxy s6 reasonably loud output volume for alerts and speaker phone and multimedia playback is decent enough for a bottom firing speaker though it is easy to block while playing racing game we'll label headphone audio quality as good but not great and we wish there was a more powerful amp onboard the galaxy s7 has a fairly flat EQ profile where neither bass nor treble seems overly exaggerated that's a good thing but output is duller and quieter than the galaxy s6 it replaces the s7 amp is handily outclassed by the note 5 iPhone 6s and LG b 10 but here we get to the real meat and potatoes as Samsung has made some bold moves with this year's camera if you want to dive deep we have the most in-depth review available online on just this phone's camera performance linked in the description of this video our review unit came with a 12 megapixel Sony sensor with dual pixel focusing technology and the lens features a fairly wise 27 millimeter equivalent field of view with a huge F 1.7 aperture and optical image stabilization in reducing the resolution Samsung is aiming to improve low-light performance judged by that standard Samsung would seem to have achieved their goal the galaxy s7 is able to focus in almost no light situations where the s6 would refuse to acquire focus this camera is very good at handling indoor lighting situations producing bright images with a minimum of noise now our phones have limited room to grow in this regard and pushing to improve low-light performance introduces compromises elsewhere the huge aperture is terrific for getting more light on the sensor but it makes macro shots a bit more challenging the depth of field is super shallow larger pixels are better for soaking up light but the lower resolution obviously makes zooming and cropping more difficult and pixel peepers will likely be disappointed in the slightly softer output of this sensor compared to last year's no.5 and s6 edge+ on the whole this is a very good camera Samsung's reputation for producing bright punchy saturated images is alive and well here a full suite of manual controls for still photos will be appreciated built with this Hardware onboard it would be nice to have a few more options to control video the HDR mode unfortunately remains little more a shadow brightening mode and if used in bright situations it will likely exacerbate already clipped highlights motion photo though is very fun to play with especially when capturing panorama shots and those panorama shots have excellent detail stitching as you move through your scene video quality is excellent UHD video at 30 frames per second is captured with a very high bitrate producing a lush and detailed image the 60 frames per second 1080p mode is super slick for capturing krispy action and slow motion video sees a huge improvement 240 frames per second 720p video almost reaches the fluidity and smoothness of the Nexus 6p and iPhone 6s it's a lot more fun to play with than last year's Samsung phones what we can't find fault with is the insane speed of this imaging system launching the app is fast firing off a burst of photos is fast the focus lock and react juez ition speed is incredible the galaxy s7 camera encourages us to ask some interesting questions now obviously no camera is perfect but will consumers be happier with a camera which absolutely excels on a handful of features or will people be happier with a jack-of-all-trades shooter it's a question consumers will have to answer for themselves as they look to throw their hard-earned money at a new phone now moving to the front-facing camera it seems on par with previous Samsung selfie options you get a nice wide field of view which should help you capture not only yourself but also your location and video quality is also higher than most competing front shooters offering quad HD resolution which should be appreciated by people looking to do some vlogging but as mentioned in our in-depth camera review the insane number of filters and facial manipulations produces some very disturbing plasticky results but all of the coolest technology features in the world won't do you much good if your phone's battery can't last the day and we're happy to report that battery life on the s Evan is noticeably improved over last year's model moving up to a 3000 milliamp hour battery we have to be seeing other efficiency improvements than just a 17% bump in cassadee maybe coming from a more efficient chipset display improvements or software optimization we're not sure but the Galaxy s7 has little problems making it through a busy day off the charger with over 4 hours of screen on time and around 30 percent battery remaining after dinner our video tests streaming 30 minutes of HD video at 50% brightness over Wi-Fi resulted in 5 percent battery draw where the galaxy s6 was closer to 8 percent and even though we don't have the latest and greatest Qualcomm quick charging technology the galaxy s7 recharged 30% of the battery in 30 minutes while I was still using it and wireless charging is built in for additional flexibility in topping off the battery throughout your day so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the samsung galaxy s7 this is a damn fine phone nearly every issue we had with galaxy s6 has been addressed and most everything we liked about the s6 has been refined there's precious little fault we can find here and most of the criticisms we can lob at this phone will largely come down more to personal preferences than objective examinations of course no phone is perfect and at this price it would be completely understandable if one minor issue might turn into a complete deal-breaker for some customers COFF COFF I'm looking at you headphone jack COFF COFF plus the galaxy s7 doesn't exist in a vacuum and it faces intense competition from other manufacturers this year even so the galaxy s7 will be a tough act to top and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time reviewing it this is a damn fine phone looking for a way to add some grip and eliminate the fingerprint smudges from your new Galaxy s7 deep brand has you covered check out D brand comm / galaxy or visit the link in the description below to customize yours today as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more coverage on the galaxy s7 and s7 edge including the most in-depth camera review available online and be sure to hit that thumbs up button for a little extra positive reinforcement for pocket now i'm juan carlos bag now you can chat me up on twitter and instagram some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next review