REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy S7 - the main contender for the title of best smartphone 2016

Position and size

Currently line Galaxy S is represented by two relevant models smartphones. Flat and not too big S7 is positioned as a classic smartphone for everyone. Screen size 5.1 inches is not a problem, even when holding miniature female handles and the absence of any specific bells and whistles in the design are not deterred by the usual standard form factor audience.

PHABLET S7 edge, on the contrary, acts as a tricked his older brother for discerning. He not only 0.4 inches longer, but also offers a special housing design with the screen rounded on the sides.

Galaxy S7 does not really seem like much, especially compared to other modern smartphones. Look, he is noticeably more compact than even the outstanding size Nexus 5X and certainly does not deserve to be called a spade.

We believe if we collect a hundred people and ask them to choose between S7 and S7 edge, the classic unconditionally win. Few dare to buy large, more expensive and raise questions in terms of the convenience of the device.

Performance and quality

The Galaxy S7 is very easy to fall in love. Seriously. Just take it in your hand, and you will understand everything at once. Feel Galaxy S7, and your build quality criteria has changed dramatically. The smartphone is not like something, consisting of hundreds of parts, and is perceived only as a whole, solid, elaborately polished piece of glass with no hint of sharp corners and lines with neatly alloyed layer of metal in the middle. About backlash and squeaks even say it is not necessary. All perfectly tailored. He's such a neat and smooth, that I want to lick it.

Galaxy S7 is made in accordance with standard IP68, that is not afraid of dust and friends with water. Please note that such a high waterproof does not require any removable caps and other rubbish. Smartphone can withstand a 30 minute immersion in water at a depth of 1.5 meters with the open port and the USB-connector headphone. We did not check the water resistance in practice as well as YouTube videos already confirming Samsung claimed level of protection against water.

Samsung decision to withdraw from the plastics can be called the best of everything that happened with the flagship Galaxy line. Plastic, even high-quality, always associated with something cheap, but the metal and glass look and feel luxuriously. For the flagship - the most it. In the case of the Galaxy S7 to set premium materials add a fashionable way of processing glass, received the marketing name «2.5D-glass."

Look at the front and rear panels Galaxy S7. Glass is rounded them to the edges. The screen is absolutely flat under glass. The meaning of this treatment is to increase the aerodynamics at the junction of the body with side panels. The transition becomes smooth, sharp corners are dissolved, smeared and replaced by that in the drafting is called conjugation.

In addition to smoothness, 2.5D-glass adds very beautiful optical effect, further enhanced by a dark matte finish around the screen and on the back of the smartphone.

Once again, look at the photos of the device. Notice some color unevenness, though in some places the smartphone lighter, with a grayish tinge? It refracts incident on the uneven surface through the light glass and glare when turning device jump on the housing as sunbeams.

Unfortunately, 2.5D-glass there are also disadvantages. When excess light, especially in the sun, you can always place the flat screen so that light is not reflected in your eyes and the screen contents to be seen. In this case, the glare is almost impossible to avoid. Rounded verge everything will still shine, which is noticeable even in the photos of the smartphone in artificial light, and the blinding summer sun certainly exacerbate the situation.

The second objective lack of windows - this is his soiled. Housing quickly covered with fingerprints, and although they are removed quickly and easily, the device will have to get used to the permanent zalapannosti.

Design and equipment

It seems that the Samsung still find the ideal location of control buttons and other external elements of the smartphone. Sound, power, speaker, jacks for headphones and USB are in the same place and at the predecessor.

Only a slot for SIM-card moved to the top of the sidebar, and for good reason.

Yes, in the Galaxy again have a microSD card slot, and it is wonderful. No more divination and suffering on the optimal amount of internal storage.

We still 32 GB to 32 GB built-in memory? We put the card and enjoy. It is necessary to 128GB? No problem. Supported storage capacity up to 200GB. The memory card is much cheaper than the older models of smartphones with an increased amount of internal storage.

If additional space is required, microSD-card spot can take the second SIM-card. Simultaneous operation of the second SIM and memory card are not available.

Fingerprint sensor, located in the button Home, was noticeably quicker and smarter and more precisely in the recognition of fingerprints, and the button is now flush with the body. False positives, when the smartphone accidentally clamped in the pocket, is no more.

Included with the Galaxy S7 there is a power adapter, the USB-wire regular headphones-droplets with interchangeable covers, plugs, and adapter for microUSB, intended for a rapid and complete transfer of data from the old smartphone via built utility Smart Switch.

Screen

Displays have always been the strong point of Samsung, Galaxy S7 and continues to keep the brand. Smartphone equipped with 5,1-inch display Super AMOLED Quad HD (resolution 2560 × 1440) with a density of 577 pixels per inch. Glass screen is protected Gorilla Glass 4 antiglare.

The most interesting innovation - this mode is Always On, where the display shows the selected user information in a locked state without any appreciable effect on the charge battery. This is possible thanks to the autonomous power of each pixel AMOLED-display. Energy is consumed only on the backlight working pixels. The remaining area of ​​the screen is black, the pixels in this place are disabled and do not consume battery power. Optionally Always On is disabled in the settings.

Other Galaxy S7 Screen indicators are not much different from its predecessor. He is as bright and sometimes overly juicy, slightly better adapted to the excess or lack of light, well in Overall it's the same inherent Samsung cool display that only criticized for excessive color saturation.

camera

If, before the Galaxy S7 you may seem as if your phone takes pictures fast and fun, after the Galaxy S7 any other camera suddenly becomes slow and "do not".

The Samsung have chosen the right path, and rather dull race megapixels marketing company to work closely on the quality, functionality and that is also important, work and the focus speed (technology Dual Pixel - two photodiodes for each pixel of the matrix) camera module. But the camera module at the same time became more compact and hardly sticks out from the body.

Focus and photographed literally occur immediately, and after a tiny fraction of a second smartphone is ready to take the next shot. No delays, no friezes and slowdown during shooting. Can be represented multisomki manual mode and scribbling clear images without any stop.

To improve image quality in low luminance in the Galaxy S7 uses a combination of the lens-aperture f / 1.7 and increased to 1.4 micron size individual pixel matrix.

Some would think that 12 megapixel flagship for 2016 somehow not enough. In fact, this resolution main camera is enough for any task. All the same, the vast majority of photos mercilessly squeezed and settles in social networks, and therefore to the ultimate User valuable quality and easy to apply in practice, additional features than the original size picture. Galaxy S7 camera offers as many as 10 shooting modes.

By default, it runs a standard automatic mode, when the smartphone itself all the tunes, and the user just selects the filter (unless, of course, wants), and presses the button.

In contrast, there is a professional automation mode with the possibility of manual fine tuning of each shooting parameter.

"Selective Focus" allows you to make interactive picture with variable focus.

We must make a clear main object? Choose from below "Middle trick."

It would be desirable to consider the background? Tapan "Far Focus."

Among other shooting modes also deserve separate explanation "Live Broadcast". It allows you to connect a YouTube account to stream and what is happening on the screen at the same time with the picture with the front camera. Trendy mobile gamers yutubery definitely appreciate this feature.

Last worth mentioning mode - a "virtual photography". Catch the subject of interest to us in the center of the lens, start shooting and we go around in a circle object. The resulting animation is tied to a gyroscope smartphone and allows you to re-examine the subject filmed from any angle.

Other photo mode, such as accelerated and delayed shooting, panorama, combining images in videokollazh and "Food" are quite popular and are self-explanatory.

Galaxy S7 can shoot Full HD video at 60 fps and 4K video at 30 frames per second. Stabilization is maintained in all modes.

Front camera does not differ by fascinating properties.

Standard 5 megapixel in conjunction with adjustable lighting and facial correction tools do their job and give excellent selfie.

Filling and productivity

Galaxy S7 version for Russia and Europe are equipped performed on 14-nm process technology 8-core processor Exynos 8890 (4 branded samsungovskih core Mongoose 2,3 GHz and 4 cores Cortex-A53 1,6 GHz) and graphics Mali-T880 MP12.

Top processor coupled with 4GB of high-speed memory LPDDR4-playfully deals with the heaviest 3D-intensive applications. Test AnTuTu Benchmark 6.0.1 showed the following results:

In addition to the current forms of communication Samsung equipped the Galaxy S7 function of Wi-Fi-relay. In this mode, a smartphone can be picked up to any available Wi-Fi hotspots and give internet through.

System

From Galaxy S7 runs on the box sixth version Android, which is installed on top of a proprietary shell TouchWiz.

In the presence of a predefined set of basic applications from Samsung, a full set of Google apps and services, social networks and a set of software from Microsoft.

Permanently applications, of course, go to minus device with position optimization, but if you do not want to spend a certain number of time searching for and downloading apps from the Google Play or Samsung application store, a large set of pre-installed software, even useful.

Dvuhokonny transition into work mode after a long hold button "Menu".

In addition to some changes in the interface associated with the transition to Android Marshmallow, Particular attention is drawn to the new game center, accumulating all the games in the same user interface and optimizing gameplay. You can turn off any notifications during the game application, disable system buttons to prohibit unloading gaming application from RAM when minimized and compulsorily reduce the resolution and the number of frames in a game.

Working hours

Galaxy S7 is equipped with a non-removable battery at 3000 mAh with fast charging. It is obvious that, depending on usage and other factors, the lifetime of the battery can be changed several times, but in our scenario, the results were quite acceptable.

Prior to testing, we do a full reset to factory settings with purification of memory left automatically adjusts the display brightness. The smartphone is proposed that the initial setup, update applications and download the update Android 6.0.1.

Total for the first hour of intense, which entered and performance analysis through the AnTuTu, the battery has lost 15% of the charge. standard operations were carried out then: photography, videography, verification of all types of communication applications and branded samsungovskih fishechek. Thus it took about another 20% of the battery charge. By indications internal battery monitoring means in such a mode would have lived smartphone 8 hours, which is very good. In passive mode, Wi-Fi and the screen Always On Smartphone has lost about 13% of their charge per day.

Partly optimized power consumption due to the built-in tools, well in the amount of about a half days after work battery retained 41% of the charge.

conclusion

Layfhaker thank Samsung for providing the device for testing. We really enjoyed. From the standpoint of performance and specifications to the Galaxy S7 not find fault. The build quality and materials - super. Nice design. The screen, as always, at height, but still shows the right thing, without putting the battery. Camera - fire. Battery tenacious. Excess capacity, productivity increased too. Current system, there are pre-installed applications. Enumerate the pros can be long, have no weaknesses flagship. But it is worth the price to touch issues such as the problems begin. To pay 50 thousand rubles for a smartphone is difficult, very difficult. What do you think?