Samsung Galaxy S7 edge preview: The best smartphone Samsung has ever made?

There was a lot of hype surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge long before it was unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and even more since, but it’s not until you hold the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge in your hand that you really get what the fuss is all about.

Its Quad HD display is considerably larger than last year’s model, at 5.5-inches, but it feels like a conventionally-sized smartphone rather than a behemoth like the iPhone 6s Plus or the Galaxy S6 edge+. And Samsung’s softening of the edges on the, ahem, edge has paid off.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge design

The Galaxy S7 edge is smooth and premium to the touch. The curved rear matches the screen this time out and that gets away from the stark, sharp and angular edges of last year’s model. It is, in all respects, a better phone.

Some will instantly see this as Samsung’s “S” year, with the S7 edge and standard S7 looking like evolutionary models rather than revolutionary, but the edge feels different in the hand.

READ: Samsung Galaxy S7 preview: Premium for the traditionalists

It also has a number of key differences in feature set and the user experience.

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The phone is water and dust proof, with IP68 certification. That means it can withstand a dunking to a depth of 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes. It doesn’t even need a stopper for the Micro-USB port to seal it.

The other physical alteration over the Galaxy S6 edge is that Samsung has reintroduced external storage. This is through a clever two-in-one SIM tray that also has a housing for a microSD card up to 128GB. The tray holds a nano SIM and microSD card, so tucks them both away in the same slot.

It’s worth noting though that while microSD storage has been brought back, Samsung will not be utilising Android Marshmallow’s flex/adoptable storage. The company has decided it would prefer to offer its customers the ability to transfer data and files between devices, phones and computers, and that is at odds with the Google tech.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge camera

A welcome improvement comes in the form of the rear camera. The sensor actually has less megapixels than on the SGS6 edge, with 12-megapixels instead of 16. But that’s because each pixel on the sensor is larger this time, with 1.4um pixels over 1.2um. The aperture is also larger – at f1.7 – so more light can be read by the sensor than before.

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This improves low light performance dramatically, with far less noise on an image taken in almost no light at all – which we saw in a pre-brief demo.

Samsung also adopts dual pixel technology for the sensor, with is more common in dedicated cameras and DSLRs. Its purpose is to speed up autofocus abilities, which we also saw in effect during the demo. Where the camera on an SGS6 edge took a while to make an image clear as it automatically focused, the one on the SGS7 edge did so almost immediately.

The final element of the camera that has been altered is that it protrudes less from the rear of the device this time – sticking out by just 0.46mm.

The phone itself has a number of key software features that are new.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge always-on display

It has a new always-on talent whereby the screen will show a chosen function without you having to turn the device on. That can be the time, date, a calendar, notification, or just a personalised piece of funky art.

Samsung claims that people can often glance at their phone for 80 times or more each day, and generally just to find out a simple piece of information, such as the time or date. The always-on feature – which can be changed or even switched off entirely – means that they won’t waste much battery life when doing so. It takes up, we were told, around 1 per cent of the battery each hour to leave the function showing on the Super AMOLED screen.

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Samsung Galaxy S7 edge specs: Battery and processor

Speaking of the battery, it has even more rapid charging functionality than its predecessor, is 3,600mAh – capable of viewing up to 13 straight hours of HD video – and supports both wired and wireless charging.

Battery use is also optimised thanks to the new processor, we were told, although we’re yet to test that in the real world. What’s more, it could depend on which model you get as there will be two, each with a different processor depending on region.

The UK and Europe gets Samsung’s own Exynos 8 Octa. That’s an octa-core (2.3GHz quad, 1.6GHz quad) 64-bit, 14nm processor, with super fast LTE speeds.

Samsung claims that the CPU is 30 per cent faster than the processor in the Galaxy S6 edge, while the GPU is a whopping 64 per cent faster.

The other model, which we understand to be heading elsewhere, including the US, will sport a quad-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. It also has a boosted GPU and a faster X12 moden for LTE speeds of up to 600Mbps, much like the Exynos SoC.

The latter model will feature Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 3.0 technology but both have new, faster wired and wireless charging capabilities.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge Game Launcher

The GPU on both versions is of particular note because one of the other main new features of the phone that Samsung is keen to promote is its gaming prowess. Indeed, there is a new Game Launcher app that comes pre-installed, which can be tailored to suit gamers’ needs.

Not only can it make all games easier to access from the same hub, it offers additional tools that can be pulled up during a game to enhance the experience. This includes the ability to record gameplay, with a picture-in-picture overlay of the player gurning and talking through it. Screengrabs can be shot and instantly shared. And there are also options to make sure a gaming session is not interrupted by a phone call or the like.

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The frame rates of games can also be altered to save on battery life. Running a game at 60fps and in full mode will use up the most amount of battery, but dropping the graphical spec and the frame rate to 30fps will be less draining.

Samsung has also added a mini heat sink in the phone, with water cooling, in order to better manage overheating while gaming.

It’s an interesting focus as more and more of us game on the move.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge sidebar

The Galaxy S7 edge also has more options for the use of its edge sidebar. As well as the contact list that the last model gave access to, the information bar can now be much wider and used by third-parties to deliver new experiences or information. For example, it made for a nice news feed during our demonstration.

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The edge bar can also be used to store favourite apps or links to pull up quickly (through a left to right swipe). We’re still not entirely sure it justifies the curved display any, but it’s a nice, speedy operation that aids navigation.

In fact, the entire experience, layered on top of Android 6.0, is speedy and nice to use – at least in the 15 minutes we spent with the phone.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge: Samsung Pay and security

Samsung explained to us that the phone will be Samsung Pay enabled as soon as the service launches in the UK. It has been incredibly successful in the US so far and we understand it will be available here soon, but there isn’t a set date as yet.

Samsung Knox is also on the phone, which will be of particular interest to business users.

First Impressions

It will become more clear when we get a chance to test the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge more fully for an in-depth review, but it definitely feels like a step up from the last model.

The camera is better in low light – one of the most important aspects for smartphone photography considering they get whipped out at parties, etc. And the additional software features seem to be useful rather than tacked on.

Waterproofing will be important to some, while the addition of microSD storage expansion will be very well received indeed – albeit without the adoptable storage feature of Marshmallow.

However, it is the general physical aesthetic of the phone that will impress initially, especially with that bigger screen yet pocket-friendly sizing. This is a flagship phone that could very well be worthy of that position.