It’s no surprise that Samsung is continuing their highly successful line of Galaxy phones, with their latest iterations, including both the new S7 and the new S7 Edge. Going back a year, the Galaxy S6 was Samsung’s intro into premium design and materials used to produce their flagship Galaxy phone line. Prior to the S6, Samsung used plastic material to produce a great phone, but with a cheap build.
The Galaxy S7 is an evolutionary upgrade to the S6, building on its success, features and build, and Verizon carries both models, which compliments the devices with the best service around. Besides the refining of the design, the processor is quicker, it’s now somewhat waterproof, the battery has been extended, and the camera is killer, with a brand new dual-pixel 12MP clicker.
Galaxy S7 Build Quality
Reminiscent of Samsung’s Note 5, the s7 has a similar curved back and an S6-esq outer aluminum frame. This design seemingly slims down the S7, measuring 142.4 x 69.6 x 7.9mm, however, the S7 is actually 1.1mm thicker than the S6. The added thickness gives a little more room to a larger 3,000mAh battery, and it also keeps the camera eye more flush with the rest of the phone.
The S7 is also a little weightier…10% heavier to be exact. At 152g, you’ll barely notice.
The side edges of the glass of the S7 fade out nicely towards the frame at a more gradual angle than the top and bottom, and there’s an updated fingerprint sensor inside the Home button, which requires a press to wake up. There’s also a microSD card slot in addition to Samsung’s nanoSIM.
The Galaxy S7 comes with a 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display, which provides infinite contrast, awesome viewing angles, and vivid colors. The device also does well in direct sunlight. The “always-on” display allows you to have a calendar, images, notifications and a clock displayed during standby.
Finally, and quite a design advancement, the Galaxy S7 is IP68 certified for water resistance up to 1.5m deep for up to half an hour, and it’s also dust tight.
Imaging and Audio
The Galaxy S7 intros a brand new camera with a lower pixel count, however, the 12MP camera has dual-pixel technology, which provides a phase-detection agent at every pixel. This vastly improves faster autofocusing, both in the sun and in the dark.
The lens has also gotten brighter at f/1.7, and the individual pixels count comes in at 1.4 micron. In total darkness, you have a single LED flash to illuminate your subjects.
The camera interface is familiar to previous Galaxy generations, and if you want additional controls, you can launch the Pro mode, which gives you access to manual exposure settings and RAW capture.
The S7’s camera takes extremely good pictures, with solid detail and vivid color. The shutter seems to be quicker, and Samsung has added a screen fill flash to assist when there’s practically no other light source available.
Video-wise, the Galaxy S7 has a feature-rich camcorder, capable of high frame rate 1080p/60fps, high-res 4k/30fps video, and slow motion at 720p/240fps. Ultra HD videos look like they’re popping out of the screen, and their resolution is similar to the S7’s still images.
The Samsung Galaxy S7’s audio is no slouch either. Loudspeaker volume is decent, using a single driver, which produces zero distortion. The headphone jack output sound is awesome, providing very clean and full audio.
S7 Apps, Software and Processor
The S7 sports the latest Android Marshmallow, which works along side Samsung’s TouchWiz, a lighter version of the overlay that is speedy and actually a delight to use. Samsung also installs a split-screen multitasking feature where the two windows can be resized and swapped.
If you’re a gamer, you’ll love the new Game Launcher, which allows you to disable the capacitive keys to avoid unwanted taps and notifications.
The Galaxy S7 is powered by either the in-house Exynos 8890, or the Snapdragon 820, depending on where you’re located in the world. Each of them comes with the respective GPU, Mali-T880 MP12 in the Exynos flavor, Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon, and 4GB of RAM is standard issue.
In the End
With an upgraded design including water resistance, as well as a larger battery, a new dual-pixel camera and a screamer for a processor, the Samsung Galaxy S7 by Verizon is a keeper….perhaps the strongest performing smartphone on the market today. Dare we say, you can’t find a better phone this Spring. You can purchase the new Samsung Galaxy S7 through Verizon, here.
