Phone manufacturers update their flagship handsets every year, and while this is great for consumers who want to make sure they have the latest and greatest, the companies themselves have to work pretty hard to make their phones look like a worthwhile upgrade after just 12 months. Based on our time with this year's brand-new Samsung Galaxy S7, this year's model looks to be a step up from the S6. Here, we break down what we know about the S7 and put it head-to-head with the S6.
Design
The first thing you won't notice about the S7 is how different it looks to the S6. Some might be disappointed by this, but let's not forget that Apple for example uses exactly the same design two years running, so expecting a complete overhaul every year is a bit much. It's also worth noting that the Galaxy S6 was a fantastic-looking phone, and if it ain't broke ...
Samsung Galaxy S6 (left) and Galaxy S7 (right)
There are plenty of under-the-surface design tweaks to be excited about. For a start, the Samsung Galaxy S7 is now water-proofed and dust-proofed to IP68 standards. This means it can survive 30 minutes of immersion in 1.5m of water - plenty good enough for an icky toilet fumble, or an embarassing pint-phone mishap. What's even better about this is that no ports need to be sealed in order to get this water proofing, meaning you don't even have to think about it.
The camera bump is smaller than last year - down to a practically non-existent 0.46mm - making the whole device look more svelte. It's a small thing but it does mean the phone now sits flat on a table or desk, which always irked me.
The final major design change here is the addition of a microSD card slot, so you can upgrade the internal memory. This is one of those rare occasions where a tech company goes back on a previous decision, realising that people willing to shell out £600+ on a smartphone might actually want a bit of flexibility.
Screen
No change here in terms of tech specs: it's a 5.1in Super AMOLED panel with a 2,560x1,440 pixel resolution, with a pixel density of 577ppi. Last year we measured screen brightness at a peak of 577cd/m2 and sRG colour coverage at 100%. Pure blacks were down at 0.00cd/m2, as expected from individually lit AMOLED pixels.
There is one major difference this time around: the S7 has an always-on display, which means it can display things like the clock, calendar and notifications while the rest of the screen is switched off. Because AMOLED pixels only consume power while they're on, this shouldn't dent battery life too much.
Performance
At the time of writing, Samsung had not confirmed the processor in use in the S7. It claims 30% better CPU performance and 64% better than the S6 that came equipped with the 1.5GHz Samsung Exynos 7420 processor. It's unclear what processor these claims refer to, but we'd bet it's based on a new Exynos chip. We thought we'd be getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 version of the phone but Vodafone is claiming that the UK model is the Exynos, though we've had no definitive conclusion from Samsung yet. Samsung was certainly bullish in its claims though, and the S7 should be a big chunk faster than the S6, though whether you actually need that extra power is another matter.
Battery life
Great news! The Samsung Galaxy S7 has a huge 3,000mAh battery, 17% bigger than the S6's 2,550 pack. If we assume the new processor has at least similar power consumption to the old model, that'd equate to an increase in battery life in our benchmarks of a little over two hours, bringing stamina up to around 16 hours of constant use. Based on a new, more efficient chipset we might even see a little more than that.
Camera
Big changes have arrived in the camera department. While the headline figure of 12MP looks like a step down from 16MP in the S6, this should actually be a very good thing. Decreasing the number of pixels but keeping the sensor size the same means each pixel gets more light, massively improving clarity in darker environments with less grain. The lens is better, too, going from an f/1.9 aperture to f/1.7, letting in 25% more light. Finally, auto focus is significantly faster thanks to a dual-pixel sensor. This is going to be a game changer for smartphone photographers.
Conclusion
If you're in the market for an upgrade, the Galaxy S7 looks like a seriously tempting piece of kit. It's a more obvious step-up over last year's model than its apperance belies and a bigger upgrade than we were expecting too. You'd have to be very keen to trade-in your still excellent S6 for this handset, but if you're weighing up the two phones for a new contract, then the S7 certainly does enough to make it worth a chunk of extra cash.
Clik here to view.
