As good as last year's Galaxy S6 was, aside from price and the screen shape, there was little to tell it apart from the Galaxy S6 Edge. This year, Samsung's making a concerted effort to differentiate its phones, with the new S7 is a touch smaller than the new S7 Edge. Similar to how Apple has the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6S Plus, Samsung's 2016 line-up is all about giving people a choice of flagship handset. It's easily the best decision that Samsung has made, as last year's line-up was a bit cluttered and it was hard to know which phone to buy. By making this change, everything is much clearer.
Since I first wrote this hands-on review, Samsung has released a lot more information about the phone, letting me fill in the blanks before. This includes the price, release date and specs. As a result, I've been through and updated all of the necessary sections to bring you the most up-to-date information. There are still a couple of blanks, but will bring you more information as I have it.
Screen
As with last year's S6, the new S7 has a flat 5.1in Super AMOLED display with a QHD resolution (2,560x1,440). This gives the S7 a pixel density of 577ppi, which is one of the highest on the market and higher than the S7 Edge (it has the same resolution, but its larger 5.5in screen slightly reduces pixel density). Needless to say, the screen is super sharp, plus it's bright and colourful, too.
Samsung has traditionally made some of the best smartphone displays that I've ever tested, so I'm expecting the S7's screen to be equally as good, although I'll need to wait until I get the phone into the Expert Reviews labs before I can verify this. Unfortunately, at the time of doing the hands-on, Samsung was unable to provide any more information about the screen, such as brightness: I'll update this article as this information becomes available.
As with the S7 Edge, the S7 has an Always On Display (AOD). This can be used to display information permanently on the screen, such as a clock, calendar or recent notifications. It's a neat trick that lets you see information at a glance. Samsung has promised that battery life is not affected, as the Super AMOLED screen means that only the pixels being used to display information draw any power; in addition, the AOD shows a cut-down and simplified screen, so only a fraction of the display is used. Again, I'll have to wait until I've got the final phone in for review to test if this new mode does make a difference.
Build quality and a waterproof design
From the outside, there's very little to tell the S7 from the S6, as both phones use the same materials and colours. It's a great choice, in my opinion, as the S6 was clearly one of last year's best-looking and best-made smartphones. Using roughly the same design for another year makes loads of sense and it is what Apple has been doing for years.
Size and weight are quite similar, too, with the S7 measuring 142x70x7.9mm and weighing 152g, while the S6 measures 143x70x6.8mm and weighs 132g. The weight and thickness difference are likely to come from the bigger battery: a perfectly acceptable compromise in my opinion.
While the new handset might not look that different from the outside, there have been some clever design tweaks that make the phone waterproof and dustproof (IP68 certification). This means that the S7 can survive being submerged in up to 1.5m of water for 30m. As the waterproof design is integral to the phone, there's no need for rubber caps to block the phone's ports.
As with the S7 Edge, Samsung has also reduced the camera bump on the back, so that the lens protrudes by just 0.46mm. It's an improvement, but I'd definitely like to see a design with the camera flush with the phone's body.
The SD card slot is back
Fans of expandable storage rejoice: Samsung has listened to your feedback and has reinstated the microSD card slot. When you remove the SIM drawer from the top of the phone, you'll see that there's a slot for a microSD card, so you can cheaply and easily expand your phone's storage. Samsung has said that the phone will take memory cards up to 200GB. In addition the phone comes in 32GB and 64GB built-in storage models.
Battery life
Everyone wants their phone to last longer and the best way to do that is to fit a bigger battery, which is exactly what Samsung has done with the S7. While the old S6 had a 2,550mAh battery, the new S7 has a 3,000mAh battery: that should prove to give the phone a healthy boost, although Samsung was unable to confirm figures. I'll update this article with the latest information when it's available, although the Expert Reviews battery tests will give us the real picture when I've got the final phone in for review.
Samsung has promised that fast charging will let you get to 50% battery in 10 minutes, while wireless charging will be quicker than before, although I wasn't given any figures.
Performance and gaming
Samsung looks set to be using a mixture of Qualcomm and its own Exynos chips, but it wouldn't confirm model numbers in the hands-on session that I had or which chip the phones I looked at used. Since my hands-on, Samsung has revealed that there are two SoCs, but not which one is coming to the UK. The options are a 64-bit Octa core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.6GHz Quad) or a 64-bit Quad core (2.15GHz Dual + 1.6GHz Dual). Both chips are manufactured with a 14nm fabrication process, which should help with battery. Both Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse are stating that the phone has a Exynos 8890 OctaCore, which would mean the first option.
I'll have to wait for the official information to come out, but Samsung did say that the S7 would have a 30% faster CPU. Impressively, the GPU is said to be 64% faster. I'll be able to confirm this once I get the final phone sample in for review.
To aid cooling, Samsung has water-filled heat pipes inside the phone, that draw heat away from the main components. Heat pipes are commonly used inside laptops and PCs, but it's good to see them make it into smartphones and it will be interesting to see how much difference they make.
On top of that, Samsung has a new Game Launcher, which lets you set some options before you launch a game, including being able to disable notifications, so that a text or phone call won't interrupt your playing. If you use the Game Tools option, you can get a floating icon that appears over your game, giving access to range of in-game options to help you focus, including being able to disable alerts, lock the Recents and Back keys, Minimising the game (so you can check another task), and taking screenshots and videos.
Camera
Samsung has gone for quality over resolution, which is absolutely the right thing to do. So, it has dropped the megapixel count from 16-megapixels on the S6 to 12-megapixels on the S7. More importantly, the pixel size has increased from 1.12um on the S6 to 1.4um on the S7, which means that each pixel gets more light, so noise is reduced. The lens has been improved, moving from an f/1.9 aperture to a f/1.7, making the new phone 25% brighter.
Finally, the new dual-pixel sensor gives 100% phase detection pixels, making focusing extremely fast. In a demo that Samsung had running, with the S7 pointing into a dark box, the S7's focus was so fast you couldn't see it; the S6 had to hunt for the proper focus. The S7's live preview window was a lot less noisy and showed more detail, too, although I'll have to save quality judgements until I can see a final phone.
Other features
Samsung didn't reveal a lot more about the phone at my briefing, but has since released full details. As expected, the handset has Android Marshmallow, 801.11ac Wi-Fi and up-to-date 4G (LTE Cat.9/up to 450Mbit/s). There's also NFC and a fingerprint reader, both of which work with Samsung Pay, which is due to launch this year in the UK this year.
Price and release date
The phone will launch in the UK on the 11th March, although pre-order with Samsung and you can have it three days earlier on the 8th March. It will cost £569 for the unlocked 32GB version (no pricing is available for the 64GB version), which is £70 cheaper than the S7 Edge costs.
Conclusion
With more distance between the S7 Edge and S7 than the S6 equivalents, Samsung is offering real choice this year. It's frustrating not to have the pricing, but it's looking as though the S7 will be the cheaper flagship handset and the one most people buy, similar to the iPhone 6S. Pricing aside, there's a lot to like here: excellent build quality, a waterproof and dustproof body, an improved camera and the return on an SD card slot should all turn the S7 into one of 2016's most desirable smartphones.
