As the only Android phone manufacturer that can compete with Apple, Samsung's flagship every year naturally attracts much attention. Can the Galaxy S7 edge, which is at the top of the Android camp, continue the glory of S6 edge last year and carry the banner of Android in 2016? Let's have a look now.
parameter
Galaxy S7 edge, model G9350, available in gold/silver/black/white
one hundred and fifty point nine X 72.6 x 7.7mm, 157g, IP68 dustproof and waterproof grade
5.5 inch 2560 * 1440 (534PPI) Super AMOLED screen
Snapdragon 820 (MSM8996), Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB memory+32/64GB storage, supporting TF card expansion
Front 5 million camera, rear 12 million pixel Sony IMX260+optical anti shake
3600mAh battery, supporting NFC and wireless charging, selling price 5688 yuan
appearance
After introducing double-sided glass and metal body from S6/S6 edge, Samsung has used curved surface and 2.5D glass very skillfully. In addition to the back cover and frame, there is a slight cutting feel. Other parts have been very smooth. From the appearance to the texture, they are all real pebbles, and the feel and grip have been improved unprecedentedly.
There are almost no empty keys, thin and tight joints, and IP68 dust-proof and waterproof that can't be found on the appearance. There is really nothing to be picky about in terms of workmanship and appearance design. Of course, the problem of fingerprint collection still exists. Before the breakthrough of coating technology, it is estimated that there will not be much improvement. It should be a beautiful price.
Ultra narrow frame+hyperbolic screen, the visual impact after lighting the screen is very shocking.
Even with a 5.5 inch screen and a normal weight of 157g, there is no pressure on a single hand sleeper. However, it seems that the optimization of anti false touch has not been added, and there will be a relatively large chance of false touch during single hand operation.
Other appearance changes include:
The Samsung logo on the front is cancelled in the Bank of China version
Fingerprint identification button becomes more square, but the area changes little
The black version will not have the blue reflection of the previous generation, which is much more low-key, but there will still be longitudinal reflective tape.
The white version becomes "pearl white", and the longitudinal reflective tape can also be seen in the light, which is brighter than the previous generation
In order to insert 3000mAh battery, S7 is thicker than S6/S7 edge
IP68 dustproof and waterproof is added!!!
From left to right are gold S7 edge, black S7, gold S7 and silver S7
White S7 on the left, black S6 edge on the right
Black S6 edge vs. white S7 side
Impact and soak S7 edge with water
system
system information
The S7 edge is equipped with TouchWiz based on Android 6.0.1. The latter has undergone drastic simplification in the S6 generation. In the following year, it added many functions and improvements that fit the national conditions of the mainland, such as single-layer desktop options, desktop sorting, and permission management. The ease of use and grounding degree have been greatly improved.
Set page entries, and different category settings are displayed in different colors
Desktop and folders
Drop down bar shortcut switch
The most obvious change on S7 edge is that the drop-down bar has become a blue and white color. Sliding can directly expand all shortcut keys.
System management and auto start control
Floating information and advanced function page
The unique WeChat and information floating windows of the Bank of China can be viewed and replied without entering the application, and they are all good after use. In addition, special functions such as somatosensory dialing/screen capture and hand waving mute are integrated into "advanced functions" and used as part of Galaxy Lab.
Game Assistant
This is the first function introduced on the S7/S7 edge. The floating window provides functions such as "masked return and multi task buttons, screenshots, and screen recording". A single masked return and multi task button function may attract many users to open this function.
Curved screen setting page
The curved screen panel provides more plug-ins to customize the transparency and trigger location.
Curved screen plug-in for compass, common programs and calendar
The area of plug-ins has significantly improved, and the application list has also grown to two columns, which is much more practical than the previous generation.
Information screen reminder
It is also the first time to introduce the function of silent screen reminder. Here, AMOLED displays black and does not consume power. Similar to Moto X in shape, but different in details:
The displayed objects will move a certain distance on the screen at intervals to prevent some pixels from affecting their life due to long-term lighting;
There are detailed display contents to choose from. Calendars and notifications are optional items, and even a bunch of background patterns are optional;
It can stay on all the time, and the mobile phone becomes a clock. You can know the time at a glance without waving;
It will not react to the touch screen. Although it will not be touched by mistake, it is a pity that the power key or Home key is still needed to wake up the phone.
For many people, it may not be meaningful to enable this function at night. I hope that the function of regular closing and changing can be added later.
The system also has many small details such as automatic desktop arrangement, which will not be repeated here. In addition, the S7 edge has the ability to hot plug the SIM card, so the card replacement does not need to be restarted like the previous generation. However, the key backlight does not provide a control item for the time being. Obsessive compulsive users can download Galaxy Button Lights for control (without having to stay in the background, you can modify the lighting time or directly turn it off).
screen
It was not determined whether it was due to individual differences or tuning problems. The S7 edge tester screen we got was backward compared with Note5 and S6 edge+. The full screen white manual brightness is about 330 nits. Under the automatic mode, it can soar to about 530 nits after strong light stimulation, and can reach up to 720 nits after shrinking the white area.
100 nits close to daily use are used for testing. In the basic mode, the S7 edge covers 97.7% of the sRGB color gamut, the average deltaE of 104 colors is 2.9, while Note5 is 1.8, and S6 edge+is 2.6.
performance
Screenshot of SoC information
S7 edge equipped with Snapdragon 820+4GB LPDDR4@1866MHz Dual channel memory+UFS 2.0 storage. The Snapdragon 820 (MSM8996) is manufactured using Samsung's 14nm FinFET process and Qualcomm's proprietary Kryo architecture. It consists of two 1.59GHz small cores and two 2.15GHz large cores. The GPU is Adreno 530.
In the actual test, compare the Note5 with Exynos7420, the top version of Xiaomi Note with Snapdragon 810, the Mate8 with Kirin 950, and the iPhone 6s Plus with A9. Detailed score comparison can poke our 。
CPU operation performance test
GPU graphics performance test
Storage performance test
On the right side of the above figure is the reading and writing performance test of Xiaomi 5
In terms of CPU performance, the S7 edge of Snapdragon 820 and Xiaomi 5 are used. Although the single core score of GeekBench 3 is significantly higher than the SoC of other Android platforms, due to the small number of cores and system regulation problems, Pi, RAR, and sunspider (web performance test) are even worse than those of Snapdragon 810, and the gap with Exynos 7420/Kirin 950 is even more obvious. Strangely, S7 edge can run the highest frequency in the RAR compression test, but its score is still a little lower than that of SoC Xiaomi 5, for unknown reasons.
In terms of GPU performance, the graphics performance of the Adreno 530 is the strongest mobile phone SoC in service. It even beats and opens the gap with Apple's A9. The GPU score on the S7 edge is even higher than that of the Xiaomi 5. This may be due to the fact that the S7 edge is larger and has copper tube heat dissipation. But it is certain that it is now the mobile phone with the strongest graphics performance.
In terms of storage performance (which directly affects the opening speed of daily applications), the S7 edge/Note5/Xiaomi 5 is USF2.0, the Mate8 is eMMC5.1, and the flagship version of Xiaomi Note is eMMC5.0. Although the algebra of memory chips is different, the tuning of different manufacturers also opens a significant gap. The continuous reading performance of our S7 edge is weaker than that of Note5 (the reason for the high score of Xiaomi5 may be that the tester has 64GB of memory), which has led us to doubt the physical problems of this machine in all aspects, but the continuous writing speed of the machine is good.
AndroBench tested the random reading and writing performance. Both S7 edge and Xiaomi 5 did not perform very well. It seems that the UFS2.0 random reading and writing performance of Snapdragon 820 is not very good.
CPU Burn on the left and GPU GFLOPS on the right
Use CPU Burn and GPU GFLOPS produced by @ ioncannon to test. The multithreading floating-point performance is about 103GFLOPS, the average power consumption is about 5W, and the peak is only 7.3W; The GPU GFLOPS is about 297, and the power consumption is around 5.2W. The power consumption of CPU and GPU is really a bit exaggerated (maybe the test software is wrong, for reference only).
In terms of stability, the S7 edge barely maintained the highest frequency of 2.15GHz in this test, basically the frequency of 1.7GHz for large core and 1.4GHz for small core was running, and after about 85 seconds, the frequency was reduced to 1.5GHz for large core and 1.3GHz for small core respectively. This is probably the reason why its CPU is lower than Xiaomi 5 (120GFLOPS), but its thermal stability is stronger.
GPU rendering curve (below the green line represents more than 60 frames per second)
In terms of metaphysical curve, S7 edge performs well, plus it may be the unique reason of Android 6.0. Machine sliding/inertia animation and hand feel are somewhat similar to iPhone, and the appearance of smoothness is good.
On the whole, Snapdragon 820 has greatly improved the performance of single core computing. The GPU upgrade can be described as frenzied and improve the thermal stability. It is difficult to detect the speed difference between it and Note5 in the actual use experience, but according to the past practice of dual versions, the 8990 version may have a better performance.
photograph
The left is the screenshot of European version G935F, and the right is the screenshot of BOC G9350
Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 edge uses both Sony IMX260 and Samsung ISOCELL (S5K2L1) sensors. The retail version of Galaxy S7 edge used in this test is Sony IMX260. They are 1/2.5 inch, 1.4 μ m unit pixel size, F1.7 aperture lens, and support optical anti shake, but the number of pixels is reduced to 12 million.
All the questions can be condensed into two points: Is there any decline in daytime discrimination? How strong is weak light imaging? Specific tests can be used to stamp previous items , the following is the abbreviated version. Click the picture to view the large picture directly.
Photo experience
Camera interface: HDR or night view can still be recognized automatically, and users only need to press the shutter. Its app has little difference from Note5 and S6 in function and appearance, so I won't repeat it here.
Focusing: This IMX260 is equipped with a dual pixel focusing system (the most famous case is Canon's mid-level SLR 70D). All pixels can be used for focusing, which can be loosely regarded as the phase focusing of violence enhanced version. The actual focusing performance of the machine can only be described in seconds.
Both daytime and ultra weak light can focus very quickly. The iPhone 6s, which has been focusing very fast, feels slow in front of it. Its extremely weak light (nightclub level weak light) focusing speed is even faster than the daytime focusing speed of many thousand yuan machines without phase focusing... Basically, the shutter can be pressed at the moment of facing the target. Manual refocusing is meaningless for S7 edge.
Imaging speed: There is no obvious difference from the previous generation. The post-processing speed of triggering night scene mode is even slightly slower than S6 edge. Due to the reduction of pixels, the sample size has changed from 5-6Mb/piece to 3-4Mb/piece from the previous generation. This should be good news for users with limited storage space. Although the sample size is smaller+ISP upgrade (it is rumored that Samsung's ISP image sensor is used in both sensor versions), the imaging speed is not different from that of the previous generation.
Comparison of sample EXIF information
Upper left corner edge deterioration comparison
Wide angle: The equivalent focal length of the iPhone 6s is 29mm, and the S6 edge is 28mm. Samsung has even expanded the wide-angle to 27mm equivalent focal length with the S7 edge. The smaller the focal length is, the larger the wide-angle is. The effect is that the S7 edge has a larger range than the other two cameras.
Edge imaging: S7 edge has a large aperture of F1.7, but except for the obvious wide-angle distortion, the edge degradation is relatively slight, and the degradation control is between the iPhone 6s and S6 edge without optical anti shake, which is ideal.
Glare control: The difference between S7 edge and S6 edge is small, but the performance of iPhone 6s is relatively better. Of course, this has something to do with the latter's lack of optical anti shake.
White balance and photometry
Sun Scene 1
Sun Scene 2
Light Scene 1
Light Scene 2
Weak light and ultra weak light scene 1
Weak light and ultra weak light scene 2
Weak light and ultra weak light scene 3
Light metering: the iPhone 6s light metering is slightly dark, but in weak light, the brightness is obviously insufficient; S6 edge and S7 edge are very close to the light measurement under normal light in the daytime, and both are close to the naked eye, while S7 edge will be significantly brightened in the night scene mode triggered by ultra weak light scenes;
White balance: The iPhone 6s tend to turn blue in most scenes, while the S6 edge is warmer and slower, and the S7 edge is bluer. The range of the latter two is not very large, but the S6 edge's hair color will be more pleasing when photographing people and food.
Saturation contrast: S6 edge is the style of reality restoration. The contrast and saturation of the image are visible to the naked eye. The iPhone is slightly more beautiful, and S7 edge is the most beautiful of the three.
Discriminative power
For a mobile phone, the number of pixels is fixed. The larger the wide-angle, the lower the number of pixels for the same scene, which affects the discrimination. It can be predicted that if other conditions are consistent, the S7 edge with the largest wide-angle will have lower discrimination than S6 edge or even iPhone 6s.
The focus of all the samples below is in the middle, which is the central magnification. All samples are arranged from strong to weak according to ISO and shutter:
Sun Scene 1
Sun Scene 2
Sun Scene 2
Sun Scene 3
Light Scene 1
Light scene 2 (S7 edge sharpening even makes the font edge appear white)
Light Scene 3
Weak light scene 1
Weak light scene 2
Weak light scene 3
Extremely weak light scene 1
Extremely weak light scene 2
Extremely weak light scene 3
Extremely weak light scene 4
Daylight discrimination: perhaps to cope with the decline in discrimination caused by large wide-angle, S7 edge has increased the sharpening radius and intensity, and sharpening is very obvious (even the font edge appears white in Scene 12). The direct effect is that the scene edge is clear and has high contrast, but it still cannot completely cover up the problem of insufficient pixels per unit scene. Sharpness can only be said to be a winner or loser with the iPhone 6s. The details are less than S6 edge, and it is more stressful than Note5, the peak of discrimination. In addition, when the scene is magnified to the same size, the S7 edge magnification is always larger than others, and the image noise is also the most obvious.
Light discrimination: S7 edge is still weak compared with iPhone 6s and S6 edge under indoor and strong lights, but the turning point probably appears in Scene 13 (the light intensity of this scene is similar to the exhibition spotlight in the museum, which is much weaker than the normal light). In this scenario, the S7 edge only has an ISO of 160, while the other two machines are both at 200. The lower the low light scene, the more obvious their shutter/ISO gap, and the S7 edge begins to dominate, and the weaker the light, the greater the gap.
Weak light and extremely weak light: This is the absolute field of S7 edge. Especially after the night scene mode is triggered under extremely weak light, although the picture is brightened like a night vision camera and there are many noise spots, you can really see many details that other mobile phones cannot even see with the naked eye. For a night club or many night scenes, it is much more important to take pictures than to look like the naked eye. The author also supports Samsung's algorithm.
The photos taken by Samsung Galaxy S7 edge are simple in summary: the daytime is not as good as that of the previous generation, and the extremely weak light is violent. The machine has large wide-angle and high image sharpness, contrast and saturation. Daytime and strong light discrimination are less powerful than that of iPhone 6s (the latter's daytime performance is similar to that of iPhone 6s Plus), and there is a certain gap between it and its own or even other Android flagship; The weak light and extremely weak light scenes are unprecedentedly ferocious, far away from the S6 edge, and set a weak light imaging benchmark that may be difficult for subsequent models to surpass.
Endurance&fever
The S7 edge is equipped with 3600mAh battery, which is the largest battery capacity in Samsung's flagship history. Although the SoC is different, Note5 also has a very good endurance performance with its 3000mAh battery, and people's expectations for the endurance of the S7 edge are naturally high.
After 30 minutes of large-scale games (NBA 2K15), 30 minutes of wifi and 4G Internet access (including 10 minutes of web browsing, microblog and post bar), one hour of music playing and 30 minutes of local video playing, the remaining battery power of the machine reached 79% after a full three hour endurance test, completely breaking the previous record and leaving the same generation of competitors significantly. The performance was very brutal.
When the system is updated to the APBB version and connected to the Wifi and Shenzhen Unicom 4G card in the standby environment, turn off the rest screen reminder, and the power consumption of the 6-hour standby is 0%. In the future, we will make up the electricity statistics after the normal 8-hour standby and rest screen reminder are turned on. Please pay attention.
Charging speed record
It takes one hour and 33 minutes to fully charge from 7% to 100%, half an hour to about 50%, and one hour to about 80%. The charging speed does not decline significantly due to the growth of battery capacity, and the performance is very ideal. It can be seen from the charging curve that the machine postponed the time of trickle charging a little, in exchange for faster speed. When charging, the room temperature is about 20 ° C, and the maximum temperature recorded by the battery sensor is 36.2 ° C. The temperature control is excellent.
Crazy battery life and good charging speed make the machine have a low demand for charging, which leads to the illusion that no amount of power can be used up. For heavy users, it is absolutely a bonus item to improve the quality of life.
In terms of fever, the temperature of the machine game is lower than that of the normal model. It is only a warm hand level. The maximum temperature of the front is about 35.6 degrees, and the back is about 31.7 degrees. The performance is excellent. In addition, the heating of the machine may be even, and the highest temperature point often jumps.
It is worth noting that the machine generates heat faster when performing large operations such as score running and RAR compression, and can even directly sense the specific position of SoC according to the heating area. Even with heat pipe, the power consumption of Snapdragon 820 is still large. Of course, this only represents the Snapdragon 820 version, and the 8890 version may have better power consumption performance.
summary
As the first half of 2016, the performance of S7 edge is really commendable. Excellent appearance design and workmanship, double curved screen+ultra narrow frame+IP68 dust and water resistance are all selling points that rivals cannot match. Its focusing performance, weak light imaging and endurance performance are even more impressive.
Unlike other brands of mobile phones that get extra points because of the characteristics of the Snapdragon 820, Samsung S7 edge is pulled down partly because of the Snapdragon 820. This is the gap between the manufacturers that stand at the top of Android all the year round and other manufacturers.
Although some computer users and we all find it hard to accept that its computing performance, screen and daytime discrimination are not as good as expected, its performance in other projects is still outstanding. There is no doubt that it is the real Android king in active service, and even the word "Android" can be omitted. and Its rivals may be left Exynos 8890 version of itself.
