Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

After facing years of vitriol from fans, enthusiasts and tech reviewers, Samsung adopted a new design language for its premium phones in 2015, and the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge were the first to sport it, followed by the Galaxy S6 edge+ and the Note5 (review). It was pretty much a given that the brand won’t radically change the designs of its flagships this year, and that’s exactly what happened. The Galaxy S7 edge hardly looks any different than the S6 edge / edge+, and while users of the previous models may not have too much here in terms of looks if they want to upgrade, this may not be a bad thing otherwise. You see, we adjudged the S6 edge the sexiest phone of 2015, and the Galaxy S7 edge continues the legacy as it has inherited the same drool-inducing looks.

Samsung makes capable displays and its Super AMOLED panels we saw on its flagships last year bear testimony to that fact. It hasn’t changed the formula much, so with the S7 edge, you get a lovely 5.5-inch screen that’s crammed with 2K goodness and is a visual treat.

Remember the days when Samsung’s Touchwiz used to be so loaded with features and options that the term ‘feature spam’ was coined to describe it? That’s all water under the bridge, and has been since quite a while now. Yeah, you can probably still berate it for its cartoony icons, but otherwise, the UI is pretty lean, at least in terms of the visuals. It keeps most things simple, and the advanced options are tucked away into settings. The Galaxy S7 edge runs Android Marshmallow of course, and we’d have expected nothing less. The newer platform brings with it its own special goodies, such as runtime permissions and the entire shebang, though you won’t probably notice most of it, thanks to the Touchwiz skin it wears. What’s missing is the adoptive storage bit, arguably, one of the best features of Android Marshmallow. In case you aren’t aware, Marshmallow allows you to use microSD card storage as internal memory, which is obviously a really handy feature to have. For some reason, Samsung hasn’t utilised it on the S7 duo, which is a shame. Of course, adoptive storage is infinitely more useful on phones that are low on internal storage and with the 32GB (about 25 gigs accessible) on the S7 edge, it’s not as critical. There are a few hacks that can give you adoptive storage on the S7 and S7 edge, but nothing like having it out of the box.

The S6 series last year, along with the Note5, all came with 16-meg primary cameras. And they were all exemplary shooters too – pretty much the best and most versatile smartphone cameras. But that was last year. This time, Samsung has changed tact, and defied the norms by actually reducing the megapixel count. However, it has added enough tech wizardry in an attempt to up the ante. Samsung says the S7 and S7 edge feature lenses with f/1.7 apertures and also come with optical image stabilisation and sensors that boast a larger (1.4 microns) pixel size to capture more light. The new flagships also boast Dual Pixel tech that promises great shots, and phase detection autofocus for fast focussing.

Well, one can’t expect a premium flagship to display sluggishness or lag, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge doesn’t disappoint. The model available in India has an octa-core Exynos 8890 chip ticking under the hood (there’s a version powered by Snapdragon 820 too, but that’s not available in India), so you get four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four more running at 1.6GHz. There’s 4 gigs of RAM (up from 3GB in the S6 and S6 edge), plus Mali-T880 MP12 graphics.