S7 edge review

Moving from the IPhone 5s to a Samsung s6 was a difficult move but moving from the s6 to the s7 edge was a breeze thanks to Samsung’s improvements in technology and some thanks to their smart switch software that lets you connect your old phone to your s7 or s7 edge via a OTG cable provided with the device which comes quite  handy while making transition from any android or ios device .

The variant I have been using for well over two moths is the international model SM-G935D which boasts Samsung’s in-house Exynos 8890 which is an 8 core processor built on the 14 nm FinFet process. In simple terms it is faster than the chip used in last years s6 and more power efficient.

In terms of connectivity the phone has a faster LTE Cat9 chip which has upload speeds of up to 450mbps and up to 50 mbps of upload speeds that are the same as the s6 which is still pretty fast as uploading and downloading data is a breeze. The Wi-Fi is a dual-band 802.11a/b/g/ac with Wi-Fi direct and hotspot capabilities. The Wi-Fi strength is so strong that I can still get a single waiting for the lift approximately 15 meters away from my apartment.

The s7 edge is slightly thicker than its predecessor the s6 but gets rid of the of the camera bump found on the s6 which is a well welcomed designed decision as it calms the perfectionist inside me. The device follows the new consistent pattern of design incorporated by Samsung in its premium devices in which Samsung uses gorilla glass panels for the front and rear of the phone along with an aircraft grade aluminum for bezels which feels balanced in the hand although it is slightly heavier than the s6. The phone has brought back much awaited features such as dust and water resistance and the memory card slot which doubles as a second Sim card slot.

The phone is still a 1440x2560 resolution screen but on a larger 5.5 inch super AMOLED display with an amazingly high 534 PPI . The colors are bright and vivid along with deeper and darker blacks along with a higher power consumption as being a drawback.

 The operating system is android 6.0 Marsh mellow right out of the box and features the latest touch wiz User interface which now has considerably less bloat ware along with some neat freebies such as the entertainer coupons and a 1-year free subscription od Microsoft one drive which adds on to my existing 15 gb making it 115 gb of drive storage but the unified storage feature is not available. The always on display is pretty helpful as I don not have to keep unlocking my phone to see the time

The phone has Samsung’s latest processor the eight core Exynos 8890. It utilizes the 14 nanometer manufacturing node which allows the chip to be smaller and more power efficient. The Big. Little architecture allows it to use a four cores at a time clocked at 1.6ghz and up to 2.6ghz respectively. The phone does have a lot of processing power though it also has an Arm Mali T880 MP12 GPU which is a sixteen core GPU which goes perfectly with the eight core CPU. The device can play any modern games such as clash of clans or Pokémon go as smooth as butter.

Memory, the phone finally got a upgrade to 4gb of ram which is a DDR4. The storage is inbuilt in my 32gb version though you get 115 Gb of cloud storage via the Microsoft one drive along with a micro SD card slot which is expandable up to 1 terabyte (in theory) of storage which is a bit of an over kill for the average joe. The phone comes with quick charge which is a blessing as it takes less time for the phone to charge in contrast to a normal charger which can take 2-3 hours to charge the phone from 0- 100% but with a quick charger the time is reduced to just 1 hour 30 minutes. The wireless charger is still supporting QI and PMA charging which is inbuilt into the phone along with the fast wireless charging via Samsung’s fast wireless charging pad.

The camera is a better one than last years s6 as it uses Dual pixel technology which makes focusing and taking pictures although it is to be noted that the pixels have been reduced to a 12 MP shooter though the quality is comparable to many high class cameras such as DSLRs or SLRs .

The battery’s is a 3600 mAh  9 v battery which lasts me about 8 hours of usage on 4g along with full screen brightness  which is pretty impressive for a phone of this size but I still got a external battery pack so that I could play Pokémon go on the go ! (Go Team Valor!) .

The price I got s7 edge for was 2350 (643$) Emirati dirhams which was less than my s6 which cost me 2600 (700$) emirate dirhams which was pretty good offer considering I got a free 128 gigabyte Samsung memory card and a OTG adapter with my device.

Over all I think the S7 edge  is a great phone and a upgrade from my iPhone s6 though I do feel that the 32gb inbuilt memory is a poor choice from Samsung as they could easily out I an 64 gb memory inside but I guess that’s what the micro-SD card slot is for   .The android experience is slightly better than the one offered on the s6  . In conclusion, the s7 edge is a great device though the decision to buy the device  is yours whether you should choose to accept it!