Samsung Galaxy S7

The Samsung Galaxy S7 inherits the design language of its predecessor, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Korean behemoth sowed the seeds of its new design ethos with the Galaxy Alpha (review) back in 2014, which continued to the Galaxy A series, with the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge (and later, the Galaxy Note5 and Galaxy S6 edge+) being the pinnacle of its new design thinking. The latest flagship broadly retains the design of the Galaxy S6, with some refinements, such as smoother edges and more nuanced curves at the back. However, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart unless you actually hold both phones together.

Brighter, crisper and gorgeous – that’s how we’d define Samsung Galaxy S7’s display. Not that it’s any surprise, as a maker of Super AMOLED panels, all Samsung's phones rank high on display quality. The 5.1-inch screen on the S7 features a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, which results in a dense pixel density of 577ppi. The colours are lovely too, with blacks appearing blacker and whites being whiter. The brightness levels are adequate too, and we didn’t find any issues in reading the display under direct sunlight.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 siblings are the first devices in brand’s stable to offer Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Samsung’s minimalistic ideology continues in the software section as well, as its TouchWiz user interface isn’t loaded with bloatware and is quite simple, gelling well with Google's Material Design aesthetics.

If there’s one smartphone brand that can take on Apple when it comes to the image quality, then it has to be Samsung. Over the years, its phones have managed to deliver great photos, thanks to the combination of good hardware and image processing. While last year’s flagship duo, the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge were able to come close to the iPhone’s camera performance, this time around, it seems that the brand has one-upped its arch-rival. What’s even more notable is the fact that it has achieved this by lowering the megapixel count to 12MP in the Galaxy S7 siblings, rather than 16MP sensor available in its predecessor(s). 12MP seems to be the new magic number, with both Apple and Google utilising this number on their flagships.

Last year marked a major change in Samsung’s strategy for its flagships, wherein instead of having two different variants – one powered by Qualcomm’s chipset and the other running its homegrown Exynos SoC – it only utilised its own Exynos processor. However, it has gone back to its old ways again, as both the S7 and S7 edge are available in two versions. While the global model draws power from Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 820 chip, the one selling in India is fuelled by Exynos 8890. Most people would have raised their brows at this decision of Samsung, since the latest silicon from Qualcomm offers powerful processing along with impressive gaming capabilities with the Adreno GPU. Having said that, Exynos 8890 with its combination of is quite powerful itself, as suggested by our speed test. In day-to-day usage, there was nary an instance where it struggled while navigating between screens or switching between apps. Helping the handset handle multitasking with easy is a generous 4GB of RAM.

Last year's Samsung flagships, be it the Galaxy S6 pair or the Note5 ranked well on all the aspects, but their battery life left something to be desired. This year though, the brand has made sure that’s not the case, as it’s offering a 3,000mAh Li-ion battery with the Galaxy S7. The battery ensures that the phone lasts a day of use easily. Even if you’re using battery-draining features such as GPS navigation and Wi-Fi hotspot, the phone will be able to last till the evening.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge were among the best Android smartphones of 2015, and brand’s decision of refining them seems to be a good move. While we might not have received a revolutionary upgrade, these refinements goes a long way in adding a lot to the user experience.