Samsung Galaxy S7 edge review
Display
The Super AMOLED screen is now bigger at 5.5", but the dual-edge design and minimal bezel keep the illusion of a much more compact handset. In fact, just put it next to the iPhone 6s Plus, which also has a 5.5" screen diagonal and you'll see the amazing difference in footprint for yourself.
The curve on the side is fairly minor, and the left and right edges of the screen remain mostly usable. The bezels are about 2mm thinner than we left them on the S6 edge, which is nice.
The Quad HD (1,440 x 2,560) resolution may have looked like an overkill on the Galaxy S6 series, but it's a mandatory feature for the S7 lineup. Samsung's push toward VR certainly needs every pixel available so Quad HD is perhaps the meaningful, if not the minimum, screen resolution for a pleasant experience with the Oculus-powered Gear VR headset.
Using the Galaxy S7 edge with a Gear VR is quite an impressive experience especially at first, and will get better with more and relevant content. Right now, there are plenty of photos, videos, and movies available for you to explore, and quite a few games. To be fair, however, individual pixels were visible in spite of the Quad HD resolution and the high 534ppi. Optical focusing issues seem to be another issue with some users at this stage to the point where they are not able to focus the image. It surely is promising, buy we can't wait to see GearVR Generation 2.0 whenever it comes out.
Generation 2.0 whenever it comes out.
The Galaxy S7 edge has the same maximum screen brightness as the S7 when you push manually the brightness slider all the way to the right. In overdrive mode, which kicks in under bright sunlight if you have Auto brightness ON, it goes quite a bit higher than the S7 to 610nits.
The minimum display brightness is 1.8nits, which is perfectly suitable for late-night reading in a dark room and it's even a bit lower than the S7.
Color accuracy of the screen is top notch as long as you opt for the Basic display mode. The other available modes make colors pop but they are nowhere near as color accurate as Basic (Average DeltaE 2000 of 0.8 and Max DeltaE of 1.5). For comparison, the Avg DeltaE in Adaptive mode is 7.2.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
| 0.00 | 392 | ∞ | |
| 0.00 | 610 | ∞ | |
| 0.00 | 313 | ∞ | |
| 0.00 | 601 | ∞ | |
| - | 410 | ∞ | |
| - | 540 | - | |
| 0.00 | 391 | ∞ | |
| 0.43 | 590 | 1382 | |
| 0.59 | 566 | 966 | |
| 0.43 | 532 | 1238 | |
| 0.51 | 628 | 1227 | |
The Galaxy S7 edge aced our sunlight legibility test, which means hasslе-free display performance even under bright sunlight. The score is pretty much the same as the Galaxy S7's, but a whisker lower than the S6 edge+'s.
Sunlight contrast ratio
The curved sides of the display do reflect the light differently so sometimes there are brighter reflections there. It's not enough to be an issue, though.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge battery life
Battery capacity is one more key area where Samsung gives you more than with the Galaxy S6 edge and even with the Galaxy S7. The smartphone packs a 3,600mAh power bank, a substantial increase over the S6 edge's 2,600mAh and the S7's 3,000 mAh capacity. Okay, the battery is still sealed, but that's a lot easier to live with when there's simply more of it.
It's also quick to charge, even if the S7 edge only supports Qualcomm's QuickCharge 2.0 standard and not the latest version 3.0. Samsung promises 0 to 100% in 90min for the S7, but doesn't say just how rapidly those percentages climb from flat to, say, 70% where it starts to taper off.
Much like the company's last-year flagships, the Galaxy S7 edge is also capable of wireless charging with pads compliant with both Qi and PMA. Samsung will also sell you a fast wireless charging pad, which can fill up the battery nearly as fast as a cable will.
Now, let's move on to our test results, where the S7 edge does indeed outlast its predecessor and its smaller sibling. A day of voice calls on a 3G network is five hours more than the S6 edge, and the 20 hours of video playback are about 8 on top of last year's model, and an impressive achievement in its own right. Such usage pattern is of course entirely artificial, but we've established it so our battery results are comparable across devices.
Its web browsing also went up with 2 and a half hours up to 13 and a half hours with the built-in TouchWiz browser.
The Always On display feature was always going to be a battery drainer, no two ways about it. Samsung's claim that it would cost you 1% per hour seems about right and it does leave a huge impact on the overall endurance rating. That's because our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which we carried out with the AOD off and then once again with AOD on. These results are not featured in our test scorecard but are calculated in the total rating.
The Galaxy S7 edge did splendidly though with an Endurance rating of 98 hours - that's the amount of time the S7 edge would last on a single charge if you use it for an hour of 3G calls, an hour of web browsing, and an hour of video playback each day. Turning on the AOD drops the rating down to 67 hours - a huge impact, but still a good score - that's few hours short of three days.
Finally, if you want to use the Edge feeds, which require the screen to sustain the capacitive sensors always on, you will lose additional 7 hours, bringing the total endurance down to 60 hours.
Update: We've managed to acquire the Snapdragon 820 flavor of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and we re-ran our battery routine. The call test was alright, but the video and web battery tests dropped down by 20%. The standby endurance turned out a tad lesser than the Exynos model, and thus the final battery rating dropped down to 87 hours. If you want to use the Always-On Display, then the rating is reduced further down to 63 hours. While we are not happy by the 10% drop in the final score, 87 hours is still quite a respectable number for a flagship like the S7 edge.
The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Connectivity
Samsung's Exynos 8890 chipset is paired with an LTE Cat. 9 modem. Theoretical maximums are 450Mbps of downlink and 50Mbps of uplink. If you have access to an HSPA network only, you'll get a maximum of 42Mbps and 5.76Mbps respectively.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge supports Wi-Fi ac networks for fast local connectivity. Wi-Fi, a/b/g/n at 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks are also supported, of course. Then there's Bluetooth 4.2 LE (for smartwatches, sport sensors and such) and apt-X codec (for high-quality audio streaming).
NFC support is enabled, used for Samsung Pay, as well as for pairing with other devices and reading NFC tags as well.
The microUSB 2.0 port on the bottom of the phone supports fast charging and regular USB 2.0 transfer speeds. With the included adapter you can easily use the USB Host and OTG support, connect a mouse or a keyboard, USB flash sticks, or just use the Galaxy S7 edge as a power bank.
We noticed the Galaxy S7 edge lacks MHL support, which should render wired TV-out impossible. But the wireless options are there.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge comes with a 12MP main camera (4:3 aspect), compared to the 16MP (16:9) snapper on the Galaxy S6 series. The field of view is not as wide as on the S6 on the horizontal but the S7 edge captures more when it comes to the height of the scene.
Samsung used completely new hardware for the Galaxy S7 edge camera though. The sensor packs fairly large 1.4µm pixels and it sits behind the brightest aperture on a phone yet - f/1.7. All this is designed to collect more light and coupled with OIS it makes for great low-light shots.
The image sensor features Dual Pixel focusing - it's a Phase Detection autofocus, but Samsung claims it's four times faster. And it is, we tested that too and it ran circles around the iPhone 6s. The S7 edge does great whatever the scene, focuses instantly, and gets it always right. It's a real pleasure to observe the AF in action.
The one thing the 'S' series in still handing on is the single-LED flash. It's powerful, but maybe a dual-tone flash may turn for the better in few scenarios. Still, with the big pixels, wide aperture, and OIS you'll hardly need to use the flash anyways.
The camera is quick to launch and shot to shot time is lightning fast. The available shooting modes include panorama, selective focus, video collage, live broadcast, virtual shot, slow-motion, hyperlapse. There is also a manual mode (Pro mode) where you can tweak ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance, exposure, among others.
Camera interface
Motion photo is available, too, it captures a three-second video before you've pressed the shutter and embeds it within the .jpg file. Unfortunately, you can't play this Motion Photo anywhere else but on the Galaxy S7/S7 edge so sharing those will be hard.
You can download even more shooting modes from the store such as Animated GIF, surround shot, Dual Camera, Sports.
Pro mode
The Galaxy S7 edge stills came out excellent, but we expected nothing short of that as the Galaxy S6 series set the bar high. The resolved detail is impressive, the color reproduction and white balance are spot-on. There is very little noise, and also no artifacts or oversharpening. Finally, the dynamic range is among the best we've seen on a mobile and we found almost no use case for the HDR or even the Auto HDR setting.
There is something Samsung could have done better though - the rendition of the foliage. It's a bit of a mashup and probably needs a finer tuning on the processing algorithm. Don't get this wrong - compared to the iPhone 6s Plus foliage, the S7 edge does an AAA job, but it's just that the Galaxy S6 edge renders it better.
Still, the Galaxy S7 edge snaps the best pictures we've seen from a smartphone camera to date and with the return of the water-protection, it's an excellent portable camera for any trip.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge 12MP camera samples
And here are some close-up shots we took with the S7 edge, which are equally impressive - the detail, contrast, and colors are gorgeous.
Galaxy S7 edge close-up camera samples
The HDR mode does a great job of lighting up the shadows and not changing anything in the highlights. Thanks to the Live HDR mode you can see the result of the HDR mode even before you've snapped the image.
HDR off • HDR on • HDR off • HDR on
The Galaxy S7 edge features much better autofocus, brighter F/1.7 lens, and optical image stabilization. Yes, we know we said that already, but do you know what all of these mean? Great low-light photos, of course!
And the Galaxy S7 edge lived up to our expectations - the low-light samples, whether indoors or outdoors, blow away the competition. Sure, you can tweak any phone on manual mode and take a shot, but it takes time and a tripod. We took all of our images handheld just tapping the shutter - no tripods, no hassle, nothing.
Galaxy S7 edge low-light samples
The iPhone 6s Plus, one of the hottest flagships around, also features a 5.5" display and a 12MP main camera. We snapped a few samples for comparison, and you can easily pick the Galaxy S7 edge as the winner. The iPhone samples are great by themselves, they are just not that good as the Galaxy's. The resolved detail and the low noise should become a signature for Samsung's flagship snappers.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge samples
Apple iPhone 6s Plus samples
The Galaxy S7 edge snapper doesn't have as wide field-of-view as the Galaxy S6 camera on the horizontal plane, but as these camera samples will show you, the level of detail is mostly equivalent.
Galaxy S7 edge • Galaxy S6
The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge shoots panoramas with very high resolution - 4,000 px tall if you hold the phone upright. The software and the fast chipset make shooting very simple, you just start panning in one direction.
The resulting images are rich in detail and aside from the moving cars, there are no major stitching artifacts. The resolved detail is as impressive as on the 12MP stills, as is the dynamic range and produced color.
The Galaxy S7 edge is equipped with a 5MP front-facing camera, which has a similar F/1.7 aperture and offers Live HDR and color filters as well. It has a 120-degree WideSelfie mode, so it can easily capture group selfies. You can snap selfies with a tap on the heart-rate sensor on the back of the phone.
The resolved detail is about average, as is the dynamic range, but the colors and contrast are great.
Galaxy S7 edge selfie samples
Here's the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge in our Photo quality comparison tool, where you can pit it against the Galaxy S6 edge, the iPhone 6s Plus, among others. The Galaxy S7 edge camera easily aces all tests and becomes the champ in the low-light scene.
The bright f/1.7 lens and bigger pixels allow the S7 edge to capture the dark sample with an ISO as low as ISO 200 and a shutter speed of 1/100s. There is very little noise and it's really hard to tell the low-light sample from most of the competition's samples from the brightly lit scene.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge in our Photo comparison tool
Full-featured video recording
The Galaxy S7 edge can capture video in 4K (2160p/30fps), 1080p/60fps, 1080p/30fps, as well as the less common 1440p/30fps and lesser resolutions. From the shooting modes you can select slow motion video (720p/240fps), and Hyperlapse. The latter isn't at a fixed speed, instead the S7 edge analyzes the footage and uses a variable speed depending on the action or lack thereof.
4K videos are recorded with a bitrate of 48Mbps, 1080p/60fps are 28Mbps, while regular speed 1080p/30fps get 17Mbps. Either way audio is recorded in stereo at 256Kbps, so no complaints on the numbers.
None when it comes to video quality either. 2160p videos are packed with detail, you can extract frames and have them pass as an 8MP photo, almost. Color reproduction is the same as still images, saturation neither drops, nor is additionally pumped up.
1080p/60fps is the one area we experienced some issues with focus hunting, apparently the S7 edge thinks that since we're using the higher framerate, we must be following some action closely. Other than that, videos are smooth and detailed, perhaps with a little noise in the darker areas. At 30fps the focusing is calmer and doesn't give us any reasons to protest.
Final words
If the best rival is the one you can learn from, has Samsung learnt the wrong trick? Or did the Project Zero redesign got everyone there too excited to think rationally? Probably a bit of both. The company delivered these beautiful Galaxy S6 smartphones but they missed a few user-favorite features, which now make a comeback on the next model. We've seen Apple do exactly this in recent years. First we get the new cool design, then we get the proper hardware upgrades a generation later.
Yes, you may've read our review of the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S7 but it bears repeating. The S7 edge is what the Galaxy S6 edge was supposed to be a year back, an all-round flagship ticking every box. And now, for the extra cash over the S7, you're getting the sexy curved design but also a bigger screen. That's the right thing to do.
The regular S7 doesn't drop out of favor as the ordinary, unattractive, more affordable option. It's just as relevant being the more compact, equally powerful, yet more affordable version of the undisputed flagship.
Now, that's what the Galaxy S7 edge is. The flagship phone to have right now. Polished to perfection, immensely powerful and reliably powered, incredibly proficient at imaging and pretty much everything it does.
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge key test findings
- A sight to behold, the design carefully refines the S6 edge, with slimmer bezels and subtle curves on the back. Grip is questionable and the screen sometimes registers your palm rather than your fingertips but one-off looks and the amazing feel in hand more than compensate for that.
- Water and dust protection will give you peace of mind in adverse environmental conditions.
- The AMOLED display looks pleasing in default mode, near-perfect color accuracy can be achieved with a flick of a switch. Sunlight legibility is great, and maximum brightness has been further improved compared to the S6 edge.
- The Always On feature is useful though it does inevitably take a toll on battery life.
- There's no wired video out or FM radio and the IR emitter is gone too, but the microSD slot is back, thankfully.
- Battery life is flagship-worthy at 98 hours between charges - a good 18 hours more than the Galaxy S7. The Always On display lowers this rating down to 67 hours, still an acceptable result. If you want to use the Edge feeds on the lockscreen, the endurance will further down to 60 hours.
- The Galaxy S7 edge comes with little on top of the Google app suite - there are a few signature apps like S Planner and S Health and Samsung's custom multimedia software, but other than that, there's little in the way of bloatware. Microsoft's mobile app package is on board too.
- The Always-On lockscreen makes some of the exclusive edge features redundant. The edge shortcuts are useful at times but you can safely do without them.
- Standard-setting benchmark results, both the CPU and the GPU pack plenty of power and are chart-toppers, future-proofing is guaranteed.
- Loudspeaker is below average but sound quality more than makes up.
- Clean audio output with external amp, only minor quality drop with headphones (though more than the Galaxy S7), above average volume.
- The all-new 12MP still camera is capable of near-instant focusing thanks to its dual-pixel technology. Images are detailed, dynamic range and colors are good, and while in terms of image quality, the camera is comparable to that of the S6, the entire package is a downright upgrade.
- The selfie camera is great with skin tones, but has a tendency of clipping the highlights. It's also about time Samsung upped the resolution of its flagship front snappers.
- 4K videos are packed with detail, however camcorder struggles to hold on to focus at 1080p/60fps, which is the only bad thing we can say about it really.
Water resistance and memory expansion make a comeback on the Galaxy S7 line - Samsung may be owning up to a mistake made a year ago or simply have used the time well to polish a design that back then demanded all their attention and resources.
Either way, the Galaxy S7 edge is what it is because it manages to finally reconcile the brilliant new design and the traditional values. After an eventful previous season, the return to Snapdragon is a sign of going back to normality. The return of the memory card slot and water proofing are probably even better news for users. If you think about it, even the Gear VR headset has been a fairly long time coming since the Note 4.
Here and now, the Galaxy S7 edge has a perfectly credible shot at capitalizing on its pole position but Samsung better brace itself for a fight.
The new generation of Snapdragon 820-powered flagships isn't short on innovation, and each of them tries to offer something unique to set itself apart. The modular LG G5 is what we'd go for if we wanted to experiment with the Magic Slot and the compatible accessories. The Xiaomi Mi 5 is beautifully compact, has enhanced camera OIS, and costs less. The Sony Xperia X Performance claims to have it all: stereo speakers, 23MP worth of still images, water and dust proofing.
HTC are expected to finally cross the Quad HD mark and are making a big fuss about the camera on their upcoming HTC 10, so it will only get more exciting over at the Android camp.
LG G5 • Xiaomi Mi 5 • Sony Xperia X Performance
The 5.5" iPhone 6s Plus is an obvious competitor, a great looking handset itself, of beastly performance, enhanced 12MP camera with OIS and dual-tone flash, and 3D Touch.
Apple iPhone 6s Plus
Microsoft's Lumia 950 XL may not sound as exciting, but it surely ticks all the right boxes - a big Quad HD AMOLED screen, Snapdragon 810 chip, an iris scanner, gorgeous 20MP camera, and Windows 10 Mobile with Continuum. Occasionally, it can replace your netbook, so it's a niche tool you may want to consider.
Microsoft Lumia 950 XL
Right now, the Galaxy S6 lineup, S6, S6 edge and the S6 edge+, cover a wide range of screen sizes and will only be getting more and more attractive with every discount they receive. The Galaxy Note5 with its exclusive S-Pen features is also a nice deal already.
Samsung Galaxy S6 • Samsung Galaxy S6 edge • Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ • Samsung Galaxy Note5
Finally, the smaller Galaxy S7 may lack the design edge, but it still has gentle curves on both sides, better handling and smaller footprint. It costs less than the S7 edge, and yet it has the same build quality, screen, performance, and imaging skills.
Samsung Galaxy S7
The Galaxy S7 edge is easily the best Android phablet right now, if the S-Pen isn't a must. Not only does it employ the best tech available today, but puts it one of the most beautiful bodies in business.
If you break it down to its parts, you will be right to ask what stopped Samsung from delivering it a year ago. Try it, and the experience may change your perspective. Hold it in hand and you may as well wish all phones were like it.
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