Review: Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Is New Wine in an Old Bottle
We tell you whether the new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is worth your hard-earned money or not.
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Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is the latest flagship smartphone from the Korean giant in India and is priced at Rs 56,900.
Sales of Galaxy S7 devices are off to a good start, and Samsung expects $5.7 billion quarterly operating profit with revenue projected to rise 4%. That’s all good for the company. But, what makes them charge the consumer that amount of money for a flagship smartphone?
We tell you whether the new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is worth your hard-earned money or not.
What’s Good?
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is just like its predecessor, the S6 Edge – beautiful, well-crafted and gorgeous. Samsung has made maximum utilisation of the glass and metal finish with this phone.
It’s bound to grab your attention, the moment you’ll take it out of your pocket. The 5.5 Inch Quad HD Super AMOLED Display on the S7 edge is great and what you expect from a flagship smartphone.
The S7 Edge also has a gentle curve at the back, so that the phone sits in your palm with ease. But still the glass back panel makes the phone slippery and attracts a lot of fingerprint smudges.
The Galaxy S7 Edge is a 4G LTE smartphone, powered by the company’s own Exynos processor, backed by a 4GB RAM. The performance on the phone is seamless.
Interestingly Samsung has added a hybrid dual-SIM slot keeping in mind that Indians do prefer dual-SIM devices these days. And if you just use a single SIM, the hybrid slot can double up for an expandable storage option also as you can fit in a micro-SD card as well.
The phone is IP68 water resistant and that’s something we applaud Samsung for achieving this time around.
Something Apple should take note of: if consumers are paying in excess of Rs 50,000 for a smartphone, it should atleast be water-resistant.
Samsung has used a Dual Pixel technology on the rear camera of the Galaxy S7 Edge. This technology was highly talked about in Canon’s 80D. It basically uses 100% of the pixels for focusing or phase detection AF instead of using special pixels on the sensor. This makes the camera on the S7 Edge both fast and accurate and in focus all the time.
On the S7 Edge’s camera is a 1/2.5″ Sony IMX260 sensor, which features bigger pixels (1.44 microns) than the camera in the S6. It also gets a larger f/1.7 aperture, so the S7 has a total 95% increase in light capture compared to the S6.
This makes the now reduced 12 megapixel rear camera on the Galaxy S7 Edge produce stunning images.
The Android 6.0 Marshmallow seamlessly works on the phone without any hitches and the gaming performance on it was also excellent. Samsung has even enhanced the edge features on the S7 Edge, which now gives you access to over nine tabs for quick app launches, making phone calls, checking weather, news etc.
The fact that the new Galaxy series works with Samsung’s Gear VR is also an add-on. It’s one of those few phones that gives you a good virtual reality experience, available right now in the market.
What’s Bad?
The Galaxy S7 uses a powerful Exynos process which generates a lot of heat. The glass back acts as a conductor for this heat and you will feel warming up. Samsung might argue that all powerful phones these days get warm. But that’s no excuse for fixing heating issues. And if someone like Samsung won’t take initiative, then who will?
The 5-megapixel front camera for some reason beautifies your face while clicking selfies more than what you’ll want. The selfies, at times, come out unreal and the face edges come out smooth. We liked the camera on the Galaxy S6 Edge more.
For the rear camera, clicking macro images is never an easy task in auto mode. An Apple iPhone lets you click macro shots with ease, but if you have to do the same on the Galaxy S7 Edge you need to select the selective focus mode. That’s just too many taps to get a close-up shot and we would have liked the selective focus capability to be built inside the Auto mode of the camera.
It’s still possible only if Samsung wants to go with a software update. The fingerprint sensor as always remains an issue with the S7 Edge. It works on its own whims and fancies. Maybe it’s time for Samsung to try out the Chinese positioning of the fingerprint sensor, which is at the back of the phone.
With all the new goodies loaded on the S7 edge that were missing on the Galaxy S6, Samsung did give the battery a huge 900 mAa bump. But the 3600 mAh battery on the S7 Edge, even with Google’s energy-efficient Marshmallow is just slightly better.
Why Buy it?
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is priced at Rs 56,900 and you only are left with iPhones if you are looking for premium smartphones in the market.
The S7 Edge is a smartphone made by Samsung keeping in mind an Android fan. And when it comes to that, it really does the job. We would recommend it to anyone who’s looking to buy a phone that they can flaunt and perform when required. But it’s also just new wine in an old bottle.
But we don’t suggest the S7 Edge for people who have butter fingers, because that display is fragile and will crack easily.
Finally if you are an Apple fan, then we are amazed that you have read this far, it will only take a leap of faith now.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)