J-TECHS

Despite being technically surpassed by the Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S7 Edge is still a truly phenomenal phone. It's powerful enough to keep up with you regardless of what you're doing, and it's got one of the best cameras around.

It may not quite be on the bleeding edge any more, but the Galaxy S7 Edge is still a gorgeous powerhouse of a phone, and makes an excellent alternative to the Galaxy S8.

Specifications 

Excellent camera; Vibrant screen; Some surprisingly useful Edge features

Cons 

Runs quite warm; It can be uncomfortable to hold

Verdict 

A definite improvement over the S6 Edge, but Samsung’s only current generation phablet still needs further sharpening

Although the newer galaxy s8 is enjoying the spotlight, Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge is still an absolutely phenomenal phone. It's true that it lacks the fancy Infinity Display that its newer sibling boasts, but Samsung's 2016 flagship still has plenty of features to recommend it.

If you don't want to put forward the nearly £700 that Samsung is asking for the S8, read on to find out why its predecessor is still definitely worth it.

The big headline here is the curved edge display. The panel itself is predictably lovely, with pin-sharp text and excellent contrast. The AMOLED panel ensures that colours are bright and vivid, although we found that they were just a touch oversaturated.

It uses a 2560x1440 QHD resolution rather than 1080p and while it doesn't provide a massive benefit in terms of visual fidelity on a device this small, it's definitely noticeable when watching movies and video clips.

It's a gorgeous display overall and one that's made even more attractive by the subtle curve of the screen. It's largely cosmetic, although Samsung has included a number of functionalities to try and make it somewhat useful. The edge will display an always-on clock, so you don't have to blind yourself checking the time in the middle of the night, and you can swipe in from the edge to bring up shortcuts and widgets, like lists of favourite apps and contacts.

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 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 there will be little third-party support.

The S7 Edge has an alluring casing that looks very similar to the one of the 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.

The S7 Edge's optically stabilised 12-megapixel camera is definitely a success. It has a wide f1.7 aperture with fast autofocus; the sensor's large pixels combined with some clever, non intrusive image processing result in detailed, sharp and well-balanced images - even when there's low light. It's true that the fast autofocus isn't always spot-on accurate and the bokeh of the wide aperture lens isn't as pleasing as what you'd achieve with a comparable CSC lens. Despite this, it's an excellent camera and remains one of the best snappers around.

Even though the front-facing camera has a lower resolution of five megapixels, this is definitely more than enough for video conferencing - especially when it's combined with the same wide aperture as the rear-facing camera. The weak link in video conferencing quality you might experience is more likely to come from your shooting angle, lighting conditions and connection speed instead of the front-facing camera quality.

Samsung makes a big deal about the 3600mAh battery in the S7 Edge compared to the 3000mAh battery in the plain S7, but 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. The S7 Edge led the pack in our video playback test, lasting 18 hours and 45 minutes, and it backed this up 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 managed to last 24 hours. That's an excellent result, particularly given the S8's demanding screen and internal components.

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, despite the explosive track record of some of Samsung's other devices.

                              

Verdict        

Apple's iPhone 7 is an excellent device, but it's just no match for the Samsung Galaxy S8. With a gorgeous design, a stunning display and more features than you can shake a stick at, Samsung has finally claimed its place as the best smartphone on the market.
Once upon a time, Apple was the undisputed king of the smartphone world, taking the top spot both for performance and for style. Now, however, this is no longer the case; where the iPhone once reigned supreme, the Samsung Galaxy range has emerged to snatch its crown.
Rather than just offering a compelling iPhone 7 alternative, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is a fully-fledged rival for Apple's flagship, boasting comparable credentials - if not slightly better. In fact, with Samsung offering innovations like facial recognition technology, a curved screen and keyboard-and-mouse support, it now feels like it's Apple that's playing catch-up.
Design

	iPhone 7	Galaxy S8
Thickness	7.1mm	8mm
Weight	138g	155g

Straight off the bat, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is a much nicer-looking device than the iPhone 7. Samsung's curved and virtually edgeless Infinity Display is breathtaking to look at, creating a unique and alluring package that the iPhone just can't match. On top of that, there's no unsightly camera wart where the lens housing protrudes from the back.
On the other hand, the iPhone 7's matte-black and red colour schemes are much more attractive than any of the options for the S8, and the aluminium chassis will be much less prone to picking up greasy fingerprints than the the S8's glass backing.
Overall, however, it's the S8 that takes the cake in terms of design and visual appearance. The iPhone 7 may be nice, but it's nothing that we haven't seen time and time again, whereas the Galaxy S8 feels different and exciting - it's impossible to mistake it for any other phone.
Winner: Galaxy S8Display

	iPhone 7	Samsung Galaxy S8
Screen size	4.7in	5.8in
Display type	IPS	AMOLED
Resolution	750 x 1,334	1,440 x 2,560
Pixel density	326ppi	570ppi
sRGB coverage	95.8% sRGB	99.9% sRGB
Max brightness	540cd/m2	416cd/m2

The Galaxy S8's screen knocks the iPhone 7 into a cocked hat in terms of resolution, with the QHD+ screen running rings around Apple's panel. It's much larger, too, measuring almost 6in across the diagonal compared to just 4.7in.
It's just as impressive when you get down to the nitty-gritty - although the iPhone 7's 95.8% sRGB coverage is nothing to be sniffed at, Samsung goes one better with a whopping 99.9% result. It's brighter than the iPhone 7 to boot, and thanks to the AMOLED panel, it's got rich, vivid colours and perfect contrast. As a final treat, the S8 is one of the very first HDR-enabled phones, which translates to brighter highlights and deeper shadows when viewing compatible content.
The Galaxy S8 takes the crown here, but not on resolution - at this level, the extra pixel density over the iPhone 7's display just doesn't make that much of a difference. Instead, it's the extra vibrancy, colour accuracy and contrast provided by that AMOLED screen that nets it the win. The fact that it's wrapped up in a gorgeous edgeless display doesn't exactly hurt, either.
Winner: Galaxy S8Specs and hardware

	iPhone 7	Galaxy S8
CPU	Quad-core A10 fusion	Octa-core Exynos 8895
RAM	2GB	4GB
Single-core performance	3489	1994
Multi-core performance	5652	6629

Generally speaking, Apple's hardware is unparallelled when it comes to performance, but the Galaxy S8 comes closer than ever to closing that gap. According to our Geekbench 4 tests, it was more than 15% faster than the iPhone 7 at multi-core operations, and closer than any other phone we've tested to matching its single-core speed.
Under the hood, the S8 packs an Exynos 8895 octa-core CPU (or possibly a Snapdragon 835, depending what territory you're in), with 4GB of RAM. The iPhone, meanwhile, uses Apple's quad-core A10 Fusion processor paired with 2GB of memory.
In practice, both devices feel sufficiently nippy - you're unlikely to notice much of a difference between them unless you're pushing them to the absolute limit, and even then it'll be negligible at best. They really are very fast devices.
Winner: iPhone 7Battery life

	iPhone 7	Galaxy S8
Battery life	13hrs 2mins	16hrs 45mins
Charging port	Lightning	USB-C
Wireless charging	No	Yes
Fast Charging	No	Yes

For many of us, battery life is the most common bugbear we have about our smartphones, and having your device die on you midway through the day can be a real irritation. Thankfully, both the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S8 have rather impressive battery lives, and both phones will easily be able to see you through a full working day with juice to spare.
In our battery tests, the iPhone 7 lasted for 13hrs 2mins, which is nothing to be sniffed at. The Galaxy S8 still managed to blaze past it by well over three hours however, clocking in a final score of 16hrs and 45mins.
The S8 also has some added advantages up its sleeve in the battery departement, given that it comes with both wireless and adaptive fast-charging. It's also compatible with the USB-C charging standard, meaning there's a much wider variety of adapters and accessories to fit it.
Apple's device is trumped by the Galaxy S8 both in terms of sheer battery life and in terms of its versatility, offering numerous and more convenient ways to juice it back up after it's run out of power.
Winner: Galaxy S8Features

	iPhone 7	Galaxy S8
Ports	Lightning	USB-C, 3.5mm headphone jack
Waterproofing	IP67	IP68
Biometric security	Fingerprint recognition	Fingerprint/ facial/iris recognition

With the iPhone 7, Apple finally listened to customers and added one of the most long-awaited features: full IP67 waterproofing. This will be old hat to Samsung fans, who have had waterproof phones for several years now, but it's one less thing that Apple's behind the curve on. Unfortunately, while it's added waterproofing, the iPhone 7 has also removed a much-loved feature in the form of the 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple giveth and Apple taketh away.
Samsung, meanwhile has added a slew of new features to its flagship line. First up is Bixby, the company's answer to Siri and Cortana. The digital assistant can do all the standard tasks like setting reminders and answering questions (though voice capabilities haven't landed in the UK yet), but can also use the camera to let you search for information on objects just by photographing them.
The Galaxy S8 also features new biometric authentication technology. Aside from the now rear-mounted fingerprint sensor seen in previous devices, Samsung has also brought over the iris-scanning tech seen in the ill-fated Note 7, as well as facial recognition capabilities.
Lastly, there's support for Gigabit Wi-Fi and LTE networking, ensuring speedy browsing and download speeds. Samsung has also released a new desktop dock peripheral, called the DeX, which allows you to use the S8 with a monitor, mouse and keyboard in a desktop-like environment, similar to Windows Continuum.
Aside from waterproofing, the iPhone 7 really doesn't have anything in particular to shout about. While it's just about caught up to where Samsung was two years ago, Samsung has delivered a smorgasbord of new features and functionalities, including enhanced biometric security and the ability to use the S8 as a thin-client device. The latter is a huge deal for businesses in particular, and at a single stroke, Samsung has added a string to the S8's bow that is conspicuously missing from the iPhone 7's.
Winner: Galaxy S8Verdict
In head-to-head tests, Apple's handsets used to be a dead cert to win most, if not all, of the categories. Now, however, its rivals have caught up with it. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a more accomplished device in terms of its, design, display, features and battery life. The only area in which Apple still retains its edge is in performance - but even that's only a narrow lead.
The honest truth is that there's simply no reason to buy an iPhone 7 over the Galaxy S8. More importantly, there's a pretty compelling argument for people who've already bought the latest iPhone to upgrade to Samsung's new flagship. The next iPhone could change this, of course, but for now, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is king of the smartphone hill.
Overall winner: Galaxy S8x
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