Samsung Galaxy S7 Review

Samsung’s newest Galaxy handset is here and seems like the Korean-giant has listened to the clamor of its fans as the new flagship smartphone has all the goodies of its predecessor with added features to make it one of the best Androids in the market. Here’s our full review of the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Design and Construction

At first glance, you’ll notice that not much has changed physically coming from the Galaxy S6. We still have a beautiful glass on the front and at the back with a cold aluminum frame around the sides.

Up front, the 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protects the stunning 5.1-inch AMOLED display along with the usual suspects like the earpiece, a couple of sensors, and the front camera placed above it. Down below, we have a familiar Samsung layout of navigation keys with a rectangular physical home button which also acts as a fingerprint scanner with the recent apps and return keys on the sides.

The left side has two separate buttons for volume up and down while the power/lock button is placed on the right.

Going to the top, the Dual SIM card tray slot sits along with the noise-canceling microphone pinhole. At the bottom of the handset, we have the 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro-USB port for charging and connectivity, and the speaker grille. The SIM card tray either holds two nano-SIM cards or a combination of a nano-SIM plus a microSD card for additional storage.

The back still has a smooth glass panel that slightly curves on both sides. The main camera module sits at the top center with a single LED flash and a heart-rate sensor beside it.

Even with the ports exposed, Samsung managed to make their new flagship a water-resistant device, IP68-certified to be technical. This means it can be submerged under water for 30 minutes with up to 1 meter of depth. It’s also tight against dust and any other tiny particles, but it’s not exactly a rugged smartphone per se since the glass is still prone to scratches when exposed to hard particles like sand.

What’s different from the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S6 is the 3D glass of the back panel which makes the handset easier to grip. Also, the camera bump is dramatically reduced compared to its predecessor. Thus, we see the design of the S7 as a refined S6.

Display and Multimedia

Since this is a Samsung phone, we are treated with their Super AMOLED display technology which has been improving since it was released. If you can recall, the S-AMOLED display of the Galaxy S before is way over saturated and misses a lot of key details when compared to the conventional LCD used by other smartphones. Since the Galaxy S4, Samsung’s S-AMOLED displays started to be spot on and well calibrated until it was able to cover most of the color spectrum.

What does this mean for consumers? You can expect best color accuracy and reproduction on the S7, plus the benefits of having infinite contrast on a display. Also, the Quad HD resolution at 2560 x 1440 pixels gives you a crisp 576ppi on the 5.1-inch panel. The Always On feature works well thanks to the deep black of the AMOLED display wherein it only lights up the needed pixels, consequently saving power at the same time.

Sadly, Samsung is still not giving importance to the loudspeaker as we still have a mono down-firing module on the S7. Nevertheless, the speaker is still relatively loud, but nowhere near the BoomSound level.

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