The Samsung Galaxy S6 edge was a pretty attractive phone last year. The Galaxy S6 edge+ was an even more attractive phone. So it's fair to say the Galaxy S7 edge is still really attractive. And you'd be right in saying so. Welcome to my hands-on of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.
The Galaxy S7 edge is sort of a mix of the S6 edge and the edge+. Its new 5.5-inch size fits in between the S7 at 5.1 inches and the S6 edge+ at 5.7 inches, though it's still carries the same 2560x1440 QuadHD resolution and the same glorious curved edges on both left and right sides. The Super AMOLED display is also still beautiful and bright and the entire phone feels really familiar in the hand. Though material-wise, it's updated to Gorilla Glass 5 instead of 4 and new for this line is the IP68 rating. So spills and even dips into the pool should be handled with no problem.
Though I think the main focus of the S7 edge is the new hardware and features on board. Starting out with the Always On display, which I mentioned in my S7 hands on video but essentially this phone will have an Always On display unless it's in your pocket or purse. No motion gesture is required. It can show you missed call notifications, other calendar notifications, messages, and a whole lot more.
Internally, the S7 edge is packed with a Snapdragon 820 Quad-Core processor, the Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of DDR4 RAM. Due to its larger size, the battery has been bumped to a 3,600 mAh battery and we do have a microSD card slot on the same tray as the SIM card.
Software-wise, the Galaxy S7 edge is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow with (yes, you guessed it) TouchWiz. It's getting even better each iteration and I feel like this iteration is going to be the fastest and best though I still prefer stock Android over anything else. One improved feature is the slide applications for the edges. It's definitely improving but I haven't seen a whole lot of third party development for this feature.
Throughout my brief time with the edge, I can report it's the fastest Samsung device I've ever used next to the Galaxy S7, obviously. And I think I said that for the Galaxy Note 5, S6, and basically any new version of anything. That's exactly what it's supposed to be like.
Though one thing that is completely new is the camera on board. Down from the 16MP sensor on the S6 edge, the S7 edge features a 12MP sensor. It has a large f1.7 aperture and a pixel size of 1 micron. Add all those together and you get a bad ass low light camera. Another huge feature is dual pixel autofocus. Let me explain that just a little bit more. Most cameras have focus pixels. Not all the pixels on this sensor are focus pixels and that's why when you use a camera and you see little boxes spread across an image and not a box on every part of an image. This usually results in slower autofocus or bad results. The Galaxy S7 edge has a focus pixel on every single pixel on that sensor so that means autofocus is lightning fast. And trust me, it is. This should also translate in battery low light autofocus as well, something a lot of cameras (not just phones) struggle with too.
The Galaxy S7 edge will be available starting March 11 if you're in the states.
