Curved screen
Although the S7 Edge’s screen is larger than the S6 Edge’s at 5.5in instead of 5.1in, there’s been no change in the gentle and almost imperceptible slope of the curved screen itself. What has changed is the underlying software.
As before, swiping in from the right hand edge of the screen shows you panels of information similar to a standard Android widget. Swipe in again to alternate between the various panels. You can choose which panels appear and, if you’re left handed, opt to have them activated by a swipe in from the left hand edge of the screen instead.
The edge-hugging widget-like panels themselves are now twice as wide as before, showing more information, but they’re still narrow enough to limit the usefulness of some of the included panels. The calendar and reminders panels, for example, show such truncated text that they’re effectively useless.
While some panels offer little that can’t be accomplished with standard Android widgets, such as the news headlines panel, others are more useful. The speed dial-esque People panel lets you quickly contact your favoured friends, family and co-workers. The favourite apps panel gives you quick one-handed access to 10 apps of your choosing – a boon to one-handed use on an otherwise large and unwieldy phablet.
There’s also a new panel holding icons that allow you to quickly access specific tasks in certain apps, such as creating a contact in Samsung’s address book, searching for a calendar entry in S Calendar or taking a selfie using Samsung’s camera app. The Blackberry Priv has similar task-specific icons, but those reside on the standard home screen. It’s a useful feature, but as with many of Samsung’s other Galaxy-specific software features, we fear that there will be little third-party support.
Aside from its curved sides, the screen looks great with vibrant colours, sharp text, excellent contrast and wide viewing angles. The 2560x1440 pixel resolution is only sharper than 1080p if you look very closely, so the big headlining numbers of this specification feel more like marketing grandstanding than an actual, meaningful benefit. The screen is still great though.
Casing
The S7 Edge has an alluring casing that looks very similar to the one ofthe standard, flat-screened S7 with a glass back, a choice of different pearlescent colours and a metal rim running around the edge. The latter is noticeably narrower on the Edge which, combined with the S7 Edge’s girth, makes it feel more slippery, precarious and uncomfortable in hand than the S7.
Faced with these handling problems, the ease with which the glass casing picks up smudged fingerprints is much less annoying in comparison. Like the S6 Edge, the S7 Edge has a sealed battery but you can now easily add more storage using micro SD cards – they share the same tray as the nano SIM card.
Unlike the S6 Edge, the S7 Edge is waterproof as long as it’s submerged for no longer than 30 minutes and no deeper than around a metre and a half. It’d be inadvisable to push your luck taking it swimming, but it’ll survive rain, spilled drinks and puddles with ease.
Camera
The S7 Edge’s optically stabilised 12-megapixel camera is a success. Its wide f1.7 aperture, fast autofocus, the sensor’s large pixels and some sensible, nonintrusive image processing result in sharp, detailed and well-balanced images – even in low light. The fast autofocus isn’t always spot-on accurate and the bokeh of the wide aperture lens isn’t, unsurprisingly, as pleasing as what you’d get from a comparable CSC lens. Even so, the only other phablet cameras that can touch it are the Nexus 6P and iPhone 6s Plus.
Although the front-facing camera has a lower resolution of five megapixels, this is more than enough for video conferencing – especially when combined with the same wide aperture as the rear-facing shooter. The weak link in video conferencing quality is more likely to be your shooting angle, lighting conditions and connection speed than the front-facing camera quality.
Processor and battery life
Although Samsung makes a big deal about the 3600mAh battery in the S7 Edge compared to the 3000mAh battery in the plain S7, raw battery capacity is only ever one part of a complex, interlocking equation. Battery life also depends on the processor, screen and software optimisations as well as the battery capacity. While the S7 Edge led the pack in our video playback test, lasting 18 hours and 45 minutes, it was merely okay in everyday use.
When connected to O2’s 3G network in central London and used for a moderately heavy mix of phone calls, browsing, GPS and photography, the battery just managed to last 24 hours. That’s not a bad result, but we expected better from a 5.5in phablet.
That’s not a bad result, but we expected better from a 5.5in phablet.
UK S7 Edge phablets are equipped with eight-core Exynos 8890 processors. Four cores run at 2.3GHz and take care of demanding tasks, while four less powerful but more energy efficient 1.6GHz cores take over to handle less strenuous tasks and should save battery life while they’re at it. It bolted to the top of the charts in our demanding multicore-aware performance tests, but fell behind in single core tests where the dual core A9 in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus edged ahead of it. In either case, the 8890 still makes the S7 Edge one of the most powerful smartphones available.
As with any high-powered smartphone, there’s the potential for overheating. Samsung claims its watercooling system, a first for a phone, takes care of this. It’s both easy to laugh at the need for such extreme engineering and difficult to judge how effective it is. The S7 Edge did occasionally become noticeably, but not alarmingly, warm during normal use. It only ever became uncomfortably hot to the touch when we really pushed it, either when gaming for prolonged periods or when used to power the Samsung Gear VR headset. It’s safe to say that overheating shouldn’t be a problem in every day use though.
Android
The S7 Edge uses Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the latest version of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface overlay on top. Apart from modifications specific to the curved screen, TouchWiz on the S7 Edge is identical to TouchWiz on the standard S7.
It’s far less intrusive, fussy and irritating than previous versions of TouchWiz, but parts of it are still more fiddly than they need to be – especially customising the quick settings shortcuts in the Notifications drawer and the arrangement of the various Edge panels.
You can restore some of Google’s stock interface, especially the presence of Google Now to the left of the first home screen, using the official Google Now launcher. Other launchers let you customise the Android home screens and interface more extensively.
Conclusions
As long as you can handle its somewhat slippery and uncomfortable form, the S7 Edge is a very good Android phone. If you want a current-generation Galaxy phablet, a big Android phone with a superlative camera or just want something flashy to show off then there’s really no choice but the S7 Edge. There’s little reason to opt for the limited availability Note 5 and while the cheaper Nexus 6P has a cleaner interface and a camera that’s generally on par, it lacks a micro SD slot.
If you can’t decide between the S7 Edge and the smaller, flat-screened S7, we’d opt for the otherwise identical S7. It’s not a matter of cost – if you shop around, there’s practically no difference in price between the two – we just prefer the in-hand feel of the standard Galaxy S7. It’s a very close-run thing though.
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