Samsung recently launched its much anticipated Samsung Galaxy S7 over at Barcelona in the Mobile World Congress. The smartphone was an instant hit amongst reviewers and there's no doubt that it will be one of this year's bestsellers.
That said, most reviews have focused on the positive ignoring the faults within the top of the line smartphone. Today, in true 9to5 fashion, we're going to delve into the pros and cons of the Galaxy S7 to tell you exactly what you're getting yourself into. It's still an overall excellent handset but we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't point out it's advantages as well as its disadvantages. Ready to dive in?
Samsung Galaxy S7 Pros and Cons you MUST know
Samsung Galaxy S7 Cons
Same design as the Galaxy S6.
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| Image by AndroidPit |
One of the biggest disappointments amongst followers of the brand when the S7 was introduced is that it boosts the same design as the previous generation Galaxy S6. For most people this is not a game changer, especially because those who buy this smartphone will probably come from either an S5 or a another brand.
However, we can't pretend we're all that excited with the design. Perhaps Samsung has spoiled us to expect changes on each iteration but nonetheless we can't help but die a little bit when we look at the design.
Battery life is STILL AN ISSUE.
By early 2016 it's surprising that battery life is still a problem that most of us face and the Galaxy S7 is no exception to this. Of course the flagship has made a few worthy adjustments over the previous model increasing battery capacity up to 3000 mAh. However, that's still barely enough to get you through the day and at the end of the day you still have to charge the phone...
Another problem that accentuates the battery life issue is that, as with the previous S6, the Galaxy S7 sports a unified design that doesn't allow you to retrieve the battery.
While this was once Samsung's critique to Apple, the company has apparently decided to follow suite and remove one of the most distinguished advantages it had which was that you could simply swap out the battery whenever you were running low.
Touchwiz is still alive
Not to worry, we'll give credit where credit is due and the truth is that Touchwiz has improved significantly over the past few iterations. That's not to say we wouldn't be much happier if the company scrapped it all together because at the end of the day it not only limits your phone's lifespan it also consumes more RAM and delays updates to the OS. This has been a persistent disadvantage and it's one of the Galaxy S7's cons.
It's a fingerprint magnet.
No, we're not talking about the fingerprint sensor over here. We're stating that the phone, while elegant and beautiful is a fingerprint magnet. It wouldn't've killed Samsung to provide us with something a bit less sensitive to prints since it is a bit of a hassle to clean the smartphone time and time again.
It's too expensive for what it is.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room over here. Basically, if you don't buy this phone subsidized like many people do in most countries this is an incredibly expensive phone. $670 for a smartphone (upon launching) that could easily be rivaled by a far less expensive Xiaomi Mi 5 is just too much to pay.
Of course if you get it on contact it's not that big of a deal but otherwise its a pretty expensive phone considering it doesn't offer THAT MUCH MORE than a Moto X Pure which costs roughly half. All in all, the price, at the end of the day is the biggest con of the Galaxy S7.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Pros
The return of expandable Storage
Samsung was heavily criticized when on the previous S6 the company removed the option the expand it's native storage so this time they chose to give back and then some. Specifically, the Galaxy S7 offers 32 GB of internal storage, couple that to the ability to take on microSD cards of up to 200 GB and you can forget about not having enough space on your phone to download your full musical playlist.
This was an important step for the Korean giant and was met with positive reviews as a big pro of the Galaxy S7. However, this wasn't the only feature that came back...
Water resistant yet again...
Another feature that was skipped on the S6 was the phone's ability to resist water. It was a compromise the company had to do in lieu of the new design. However, on the S7 water resistance is back with an IP68 certificate that allows you to place the handset up to 3 feet below water for a maximum of 30 minutes.
New and improved camera.
The cameras on Galaxy phones have always been a force to be reckoned with and the S7 stays true to form with a much better camera than the previous iteration. Specifically, the company bumped down the megapixel amount from 16 to 12 megapixels but made the pixels bigger therefore allowing more light and detail into them.
Couple that with optical image stabilization and an aperture value of f/1.7 and you got a real juggernaut on your hands. It's hard to explain all the improvements the camera has gone through on this list so we urge you to look them up because at the end of the day this is one of the best cameras in the market.
Front facing flash
On that note, another advantage that I still can't believe isn't the norm by know is that the front facing 5 megapixel camera has a built in flash. That means that your selfies will look better than ever and you don't have to worry about low lighting conditions any more.
Very fast charging
While we went down and heavy on the battery life, an improvement that Samsung made over it in a rather indirect fashion was introducing a much faster charging option. Specifically, the S7 charges up to 25% in 15 minutes, 50% in 30 minutes and when you want to give it a full charge from scratch it takes a little over an hour.
All of this is through the traditional charging methods, but wireless charging has also improved considerably thanks to Samsung's very own QI base. Sure, it's still going to take more time than conventional charging through a cable but if you're looking for an elegant way of charging your phone at night and want to forget about cables then this is the way to go.
The always on display
One of the new software introductions that came along with the S7 is the always on display. As the name points out, this means that your display is always turned on to show you the time, missed calls, messages and so forth.
It's a nifty feature when you take into account that it only consumes about 1% battery life per hour and in the long run it should save up some battery life since you don't have to fire up the display every time you want to make sure you didn't miss anything.
Overall Specs
Finally, you can't recap all the pros without taking a moment to point out the obvious hardware improvements. To the point we would like to give an honourable mention to the spectacular 5.1 inch Super AMOLED 2K display that portrays truly stunning colors. As well as that we would point out the massive 4 GB of RAM, Snapdragon 820 CPU (or Exynos depending on your region), as well as the Gorilla Glass 4 coating.
All in all, it's a pretty smashing phone and we really can't say anything bad about the internals as well as the screen because it's a smartphone that runs smoothly on a perfect display even when you're running dozens of apps at a time.
Wrapping things up...
It doesn't take a genius to see that there are more advantages then disadvantages in this pros and cons listing of the Galaxy S7. However, the cons are there. We would've liked a different design, a longer lasting battery life and above all a more moderate pricing strategy.
Heck, if this phone were priced in the 400-500 range we would most likely ignore all the cons on this list but it's not (yet) so we must be thorough. That said, you really can't go wrong with this phone and if you've got the cash it's an excellent decision that you'll hardly regret.