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| Style & Handling |  |
| User Friendliness |  |
| Feature Set | |
| Performance | |
| Battery Power | |
| Overall Score |  |
| Pros | Cons |
| + Stunning design | - Expensive |
| + Water resistant | - Too big for some |
| + Big battery | - Fewer megapixels in camera |
Verdict: The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge probably won’t sell as well as the standard S7, but it’s almost certainly a better phone, thanks to a bigger battery and a better design.
Samsung isn’t giving up on curved screens and if the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is anything to go by that’s a good thing.
This is a phone that has all the great features of the Samsung Galaxy S7, including a water resistant build, a microSD card slot, a powerful processor and loads of power. Plus, a bigger battery and a more stylish design.
It sounds like a winner but does it all curve into place? Read on for our full first impressions to find out.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is a good looking phone, that much is immediately clear. It has a slim 7.7mm thick body with a metal frame and glass on both the front and back.
Better yet, both the screen and the glass back curve slightly, giving it a more rounded look than the Samsung Galaxy S7 or indeed the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge have.
It’s a big phone but it fits comfortably in the hand and the curved screen helps make it seem smaller than it is.
The really big news with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge though is that it’s both dust proof and water resistant, to a depth of 1.5 metres for 30 minutes. That’s a big deal. Samsung added waterproofing to the Galaxy S5 but then dropped it for the Galaxy S6, so it’s great to see it back again.
Of course the screen is always going to be the star of the show when it’s curved. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge curves at both edges, which both looks great and serves a certain amount of purpose, as the curves can be used to house shortcuts to favourite contacts and the like.
It doesn’t add a huge amount of functionality, but it’s a useful extra that almost no other phone can or does offer.
The screen is absolutely stunning too. It’s a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display, delivering bright, vibrant visuals. It’s very sharp too at 1440 x 2560, delivering a pixel density of 534 pixels per inch.
That’s almost sharper than it needs to be for general use, but essential if you’re planning to pair it with a Gear VR.
One other trick Samsung has added is to make the screen always-on, so you can see the time and notifications without having to press the power button. That saves valuable time and while it sucks down a little bit of battery it’s potentially less intensive on the juice pack than if you’re constantly turning the full display on.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge comes in two configurations, one with a Snapdragon 820 chipset and one with Samsung’s in-house Exynos 8890 and it’s the latter that we’re expecting to get in the UK.
This is an octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four cores running at 1.6GHz, so it’s got a serious amount of power.
That’s all coupled with 4GB of RAM, which will help no end, especially when running numerous apps at the same time.
In short the Galaxy S7 Edge is a very powerful phone, one which will have no problem running anything available right now.
The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is an interesting one. Interesting because while the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge had a 16MP snapper the S7 Edge drops it to 12MP.
But while the number of megapixels is a downgrade it’s been done for a good reason. You see the camera on the S7 Edge uses fewer but larger pixels, so it can take in more light and therefore get better snaps when the light isn’t ideal.
Almost all phones struggle in dark environments so this could be hugely beneficial, but it comes at the expense of a certain amount of detail.
The camera benefits from optical image stabilisation though and can shoot 2160p video at 30fps, so it should be very good overall.
The front-facing camera is less impressive. This has just a 5MP sensor, which is weaker than even some mid-range phones. So if you’re a selfie fan the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge might not be the phone for you.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge runs Android Marshmallow overlaid with TouchWiz. Samsung’s interface isn’t to everyone’s taste but it’s more refined than ever here and the edge screen features highlighted above are genuinely useful.
Other features include the return of Samsung’s fingerprint scanner and a new ‘Game Launcher’ app, which takes gaming to the next level, giving you control over numerous aspects of games, including the resolution and framerate, as well as allowing you to record footage of them.
There’s a 3600 mAh juice pack in the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which is pretty huge even given the size of the phone’s screen. It remains to be seen how much life that will translate to but we’re hopeful that it will have a lot of juice.
Memory comes in at 32GB and that can be expanded by up to 200GB more if you invest in a microSD card. There wasn’t even a microSD card slot in the previous model, so that’s a big deal.
Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge looks to be an improvement on the S6 Edge in almost every way, with a bigger screen, a better design, a larger battery, a microSD card slot, more power and a water resistant build.
It also looks like a better phone than the Samsung Galaxy S7, thanks to a larger battery and those curved edges. We’ll reserve final judgement for our full review, but so far the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge looks extremely promising.
| Dimensions (mm): 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7 Weight (g): 157 Battery capacity (mAh): 3600 Colours: Black, White, Gold, Silver Screen size (inches): 5.5 Resolution: 1440x2560 pixels Pixels per inch (PPI): 534 Processor: 2.3GHz octa-core Processor make: Exynos 8890 RAM: 4GB Internal storage: 32/64GB Expandable storage up to (GB): 200GB Camera: 12-megapixel and 5-megapixel Operating System: Android Marshmallow |
