This is Andrew with Android Central and this is our full Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review.
It's undeniable that last year Samsung really took a risk with the Galaxy S6 Edge after
the failure of the galaxy note edge in the year before.
It wasn't a proven fact that Samsung was going to draw in any consumers with it's dual edge
display.
But in 2016 the Galaxy S7 Edge is undeniably the pinnacle of the flagship line for Samsung.
With the Galaxy S7 Edge it's all about Samsung putting the best possible components, design,
external, internal, everything is all the best that it has to offer.
Right off the top it's bigger than the regular Galaxy S7 which gives you a 5.5 inch screen
to work with, but also gives room for a 3600 milliamp hour battery offering the best longevity
of any Galaxy S-phone to date.
ON the inside it's powered by one of two of the best processors: Snapdragon 820, or Samsung's
own Exynos 8 octocore processor.
4 gigs of ram is gonna let you run anything you want to throw at it, and yes the SD card
is back adding 200 gigs of extra storage to the 32 gigs already inside the phone.
On the outside it's more of the same from Samsung compared to 2015 but that's not necessarily
a bad thing.
The dual curved display is on the front still, that flexible display underneath gorilla glass
four but now it's accentuated with the same kind of curves on the back like you might
have seen on the galaxy note 5.
It means there's a little less metal to go around on the outside, but it's amazingly
stunning to look at, and it has extra usability because it's shrunk down just a little bit
from the galaxy s6 edge plus.
And the extra bonus here is that the camera pod doesn't stick out nearly as much on the
back, it's less than half a millimetre so it won't be rocking around on a table on you.
Around the world you'll have a choice of four different colors: a really bright an ostentatious
gold, a reflective silver, a dull white, and a stealthy black.
All four colours are slightly changed from last year.
and they are all gorgeous.
Now you wouldn't know just by looking at it but the galaxy s7 edge has an IP68 water proof
and dust proof rating, now that's just a bunch of numbers of course but what it really means
is that you can put this phone for thirty minutes in water up to three feet deep and
it won't come out looking any worse for the wear.
And while it's down there if it's picking up any grit or anything like that it's not
gonna matter either and it does that without any blocks over the ports, the headphone jack,
usb port, microphones it doesn't matter.
You don't need a waterproof case with this phone.
Now you shouldn't be using this for any kind of action photography, it's not gonna record
video under water or do anything like that but if you're sitting down at a dinner and
somebody splashes a drink all over it or if you're walking here and you happen to dunk
it into a pond it's gonna be all right.
So one of the big things everybody was asking Samsung to bring back with the Galaxy S7 is
the micro SD card expansion slot and they've tucked it away right next to the SIM card
so there's no extra ports on the galaxy S7 edge but you can toss in a micro sd card up
to 200 gigabytes there.
Now it's gonna work just like it did in the galaxy s5 and previous even though the phone
is running marshmellow.
Now that means that there's no adoptable storage here.
The sd card is just gonna work as a separate partition of storage where you can store media,
let your camera record to a swap files back and forth between your camera, and maybe your
phone and your laptop and your desktop at home.
That's ok though because additional storage is additional storage and being able to expand
after the fact is a huge plus
When it comes to software this is Samsung's first phone to launch with Android 6.0 marshmellow,
and while that's a big jump from lollipop.
Visually things haven't changed all that much.
Samsung's taken the opportunity to flatten out the interface just a little bit more and
drop a lot of the bright blues and yellows that were a bit garish in the previous verion.
A lot more whites, greys and blacks accent the entire interface.
But, if you've used a Samsung phone before you're gonna feel right at home on the Galaxy
S7 Edge.
But on the edge side you're gonna have a couple new features on that curved display.
Swiping in on the Edge UX, as it's called, from either the left or right side you're
gonna be able to do even more.
So you're not gonna be able to access just a couple of common apps and people, you're
back to having full widget experiences including news tickers, some extra tools, some, stock
information, anything that you can download and put on there from third party developers
included, will be right at your fingertips even when you're not on the homescreen.
Two of the headline features in this release for Samsung are a game launcher which let's
you pin distinct apps into a games folder that when you launch them you're gonna get
the full power of the processor in the galaxy s7, and you're not gonna be interrupted by
the notifications.
On theother side of things in the more subtle category, you have an always on display on
the galaxy s7 edge, that means when you go to hit the power button the screen turns off
and then momentarily it'll come back on and you're gonna see information like a clock,
you're gonna see notifications, battery charge status, all that stuff that you would normally
turn on the screen for is gonna be right there at a glance without even touching the phone.
After having one of the best smartphone cameras available last year with the galaxy s6 edge
Samsung actually blew up the whole thing and started from scratch on the galaxy s7 edge.
The big number drop is from 16 megapixels last year to 12 megapixels this year, but
that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It let's Samsung increase the pixel size to 1.4 microns, now that doesn't sound very big
but for pixels that's really large.
And with each one being larger, it brings in way more light, now that's also aided by
the fact that we have an f-over-1.7 lens which is an improvement of f-1.9 in last year.
Now that also let's in additional light meaning that when the sensor gets more light into
it and it's able to absorb more, Samsung's obviously focusing on low light photography
here and that's really where we take a lot of our smartphone photos and where we're most
disappointed historically with the photo results.
So with these two features of the larger pixels and the wider aperture the galaxy s7 edge
has better low light performance than last year with is very surprising considering how
good we rated the galaxy s6 edge.
Now the only downside here is that it seems to have taken a little hit on quality on brighter
scenes, where the galaxy s7 edge just lacks that very very tack sharp lines and edges
around everything mostly because we have lower megapixel count so you're not gonna be able
to zoom in on things and notice all that fine detail, but also seems to be that the sensor
style just isn't well suited to that bright bright photography in the way that the galaxy
s6 edge was.
Whether or not that trade off of better low light performance for a slight decrease in
bright light performance is worth it to you is gonna be a personal decision, but Samsung's
very clearly positioning this camera to be a lot better in low light and I think it's
gonna be a good decision
So when you bring it all together, does that galaxy s7 edge stand up to the immense pressure
of being a top end flagship samsung phone.
Well actually it really does
When you look at the hardware the samsung galaxy s7 edge is a work of art.
When you see the curved metal around the sides, the curved curved glass on both the front
and back, it really feels just as great as it looks.
And at the same time, Samsung managed to fit in an SD card slot which everybody was asking
for and waterproofing without any flaps over the ports.
Though those extra curves make it a little tougher to hold onto when added to the larger
screen size, it's really worth it when you look at just how nice it is to look at.
And if you just can't put up with it, there's always the smaller galaxy s7 for you to choose.
But if you do choose to stick with the larger size, you're gonna get some extra software
features on the edge screens.
You can do more with them now, with glanceable information from all different kinds of sources,
extra tools, everything that you want that you just won't want to go back to the home
screen to get.
The galaxy s7 edge really meets and exceeds all of my expectations on performance, and
it does so while keeping the battery life at a full day easily 16 hours out of the 3600
milliamp hour battery.
Perhaps the area where the galaxy s7 edge comes up short, is the camera surprisingly.
The drop to 12 megapixels to larger pixels and a larger aperture means that it's great
in low light situations.
It evens bests the galaxy s6 of last year in some cases.
But the problem is thats come at the cost of decreased quality in good lighting situations
which you wouldn't have expected.
It's still gonna compete to be one of the best cameras out there today, but it's gonna
actually have competition and that's something that didn't really say last year.
So when you wrap it all together, is that galaxy s7 edge worthy of being your next smartphone?
Well there's a good chance that it is.
If you can put up with the larger size and slightly awkward edges you're gonna be getting
a really powerful, expandable, and waterproof phone with marshmallow on board and a great
camera.
So now that you're done learning about the galaxy s7 edge, you can learn about the smaller/flatter
version the galaxy s7 in the video annotation right above me.