[Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Guides, News, & Discussion] Cst79:
My small review of Galaxy S7 Edge

Hello,

I'll (re)post my review here, since the forum mods closed my thread and suggested that discussion should be placed here.

First, my mini-review is based on a business type of usage. I don't play games on the phone, I rarely use the camera. What I do need from a smartphone is outstanding battery life, great notification management and great web browsing performance and battery efficiency.

I got my S7 Edge after owning an LG G2 for 2 years. That phone was really incredibile at launch, with 3000mAh space-saving, stacked battery and 75% screen to body ratio, very narrow bezels all-around. Although I could afford them, I skipped the G3 and G4 because I thought they were too big and the Snapdragon 808 and 810 processors were quite bad in my opinion, from many points of view, and battery life actually decreased instead of increasing. The Galaxy S6 lacked the battery life I was looking for. It did cross my mind to import a Galaxy S6 Active from the US (it has a 3500 mAh battery), but until I managed to do this the S7 launched...

What I really like about the S7 Edge:

- The screen is gorgeous

- Screen to body ratio is great, 76% is among the best. This is the first and only 5.5" phone that I can fit in my pants front pocket, it is probably the narrowest 5.5" phone in existence.

- The camera quality and focus speed are truly outstanding. RAW capture is great too (I like post-processing photos in Lightroom).

- The general operating speed of the Exynos 8890 processor (especially after 2 years of Snapdragon 800) is incredible

- Web browsing speed is phenomenal

- Ad blocking support in Samsung's browser is truly welcome, now that the Taboola pseudo-malware took over so many sites.

- SD card support (combined with the processing power) opens up new possibilities of easily post-processing pictures from a professional camera directly inside the phone and not inside a laptop.

- The Gear VR using the phone power is incredibly convenient and money-saving if graphics-heavy 3D games are not your main VR focus.

Now my issues with the S7 Edge:

- Lack of double tap to wake (LG's "Knock On" feature) is killing me. That feature is extremely useful, for example when the phone is in a car's cradle I don't have to struggle to reach the home button to wake up the phone, double tap anywhere on the screen and it's on. This feature would also save the home and power button life (list of phones whose power buttons I managed to destroy: Nexus One, Nexus S, Nexus 4). the lack of "double tap to sleep" can probably easily be solved with a 3rd party launcher so this is not a concern.

- The Always-On screen does not display all missed notifications, only missed calls and SMS messages. You can't use it to notify about missed email messages, not even using Samsung's own email app. Whatsapp and other notifications is out of question too. Hopefully this may change with an update sooner rather than later. Also, the Always-On screen does have a significant impact on battery life, 20% in 24 hours is quite high.

- The notification LED is quite low quality. I am a notifications junkie and use software like Light Flow to set up notifications mainly of different duration patterns. Not only the S7 "RGB" LED can't emulate most RGB colors (the white is actually pink or so, basically it can only do red, green and blue) and it doesn't respect the on/off intervals in milliseconds. But thankfully it is there can can be used, unlike many other manufacturers who chose to omit it and provide some half-assed alternatives instead (Motorola for example: how can I see their active display with a single glance if the phone is 1 meter away from me ?). I have to say the G2's notification LED was just about perfect in all areas.

- My first S7 Edge was delivered with a hardware defect (dropped all calls, overheated), this forced me to go through a lot of pain in replacing it, and even so I had to make compromises on the price when I got my second one since the initial deal was not available anymore.

I would have expected better quality from Samsung.

Neutral points:

- Battery life. It is definitely better than my LG G2 with its worn out battery (which can be easily replaced) but I'm not sure it will last 2 full days as I have hoped. The main reason I chose the S7 Edge over the S7 was the 20% larger battery (3600 vs 3000 mAh). I admit, maybe my expectations were too high.

- Lack of IR blaster and FM radio. I really don't mind these, but I did use the IR blaster from time to time, maybe twice a month or so when the TV remote was not nearby. And the FM radio...I would have used it a whole lot more if some manufacturer found a solution to work with Bluetooth headsets and not require the wired headphones as an antenna. So not a concern, I prefer just not to use it even if available.

Conclusion:

I really like the S7 Edge, but if the LG G5 will prove to offer great battery life without battery removal which I don't want to mess with (although I highly doubt it with a 2800 mAh battery and Snapdragon 820 processor, but who knows, maybe their engineers pulled off a miracle) and its always-on screen will show all notifications and consume less power, I may consider giving my S7 Edge to my fiancee and getting a G5 instead.

So, these are my first impressions with the phone. Thanks for reading