7 reasons why the Samsung Galaxy S7 should be your next smartphone

Considering the Samsung Galaxy S6 (and its variants – S6 edge and S6 edge plus) was the near-perfect smartphone of 2015, Samsung needed to do something special with the Galaxy S7. Unpacking its new flagship at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016, Samsung gave the world plenty to love. If you’re in the market for a new smartphone (and have a thick wallet), you may want to seriously consider the Galaxy S7. Here’s why.

#1 Performance

The Galaxy S7 features the fastest, most powerful mobile processors ever – Samsung’s very own octa-core Exynos 8 and the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. We’re talking about AnTuTu scores that are in excess of 100,000 points. That blows everything away, including the previously fastest Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 950, by a mile.

The Galaxy S7 is 30% faster than the Galaxy S6 in compute power, and over 60% faster in graphics performance.

Performance is pushed even further as S7 mated to 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, with superfast 32GB UFS 2.0-based storage.

This thing flies.

#2 Stunning design

The S6, S6 edge and S6 edge plus were undoubtedly one of the most beautiful phones last year. Fantastically built, beautiful to touch and hold, they were a huge departure from the design language of their predecessor.

With the S7, Samsung refines this further. It’s overall rounder and smoother at the edges, making it nice to hold. This is especially apparent (and you’ll appreciate it) in the S7 edge.

One of the most visible changes is the reduced camera bump. Samsung has substantially shaved the bump down to a minimum, now just 0.46mm. At least it’ll now lay flatter on the table.

The S7 also marks the return of IP68 dust- and water-resistant, a feature removed from the S6. Certainly gives you added peace of mine. The cool thing about it is that it does away with a protective flap, like found on the previous S5.

# MicroSD

Another feature Samsung has put back into the new flagship is microSD expansion. So if you need plenty of space for all the high-res stills, 2K and 360-degree vidoes, you’ve got yourself covered.

Samsung has built-in a hybrid SIM slot that houses either two nano-SIMs or one nano-SIM and a microSD card.

[nextpage title=”Next up: AOD, Camera, Gaming, Battery Life”]

# Always-on Display

Thanks to power-efficient AMOLED technology, and a special display driver unique to the S7, it now supports Always-On Display. This means you’ll always have the time, date, calendar and notifications a glance away. You can customise what you want to reveal on the AOD, as well as several customized pictures.

# Best camera

Now, the S6 had an outstanding camera. The best in fact on any smartphone. But here’s the thing. The S7 camera is even better. How? First of, the S7 uses a superfast f/1.7 lens both on the back and front. An all-new 12MP Dual Pixel camera and bigger 1.4um pixel size really takes advantage of the big aperture lens.

This combo delivers 95% more light, which means it’s an incredible camera in low-light, and superfast in any situation. Thanks to Dual Pixel and 100% PDAF, autofocus is split-second accurate, the fastest I’ve seen on any smartphone.

Built-in OIS ensures your footage stays rock steady, and stills are sharp.

Outstanding.

# Gaming powerhouse

Being the powerhouse that it is, gaming on the S7 is a no-brainer. Graphics performance is fantastic, together with amazing visual quality. Something only seen on gaming PCs, the S7 features a unique water-cooling system that uses a copper pipe filled with liquid. This system helps to keep the phone cool, even when you’re playing the most intense games.

To add to that, Game Launcher lets you find games and manage the games you play. Want a save power mode? You can. Don’t want notifications to pop up when you’re in-game? You can tweak that too. Want a screenshot or record a video of gameplay. Yes, you can.

Something you will here a lot this year is the Vulkan API, a graphics framework, built from ground up for mobile gaming. The S7 comes built with Vulkan API, which means incredible graphics and lower power consumption and heat.

# Battery life

Samsung has made the battery bigger in both the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. The power units are 3,000mAh and 3,600mAh respectively. Both support Samsung’s fast charging.

So there you go, the key reasons why you should consider the S7 and S7 edge as your next smartphone. If there ever was a perfect smartphone, this is pretty darn close.

What do you think?