The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge Review: Part 2
by Joshua Ho on July 5, 2016 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance Revisited
Now that we’ve covered battery life we can revisit another topic where our testing has changed dramatically for 2016, which is our system performance benchmarks. As previously mentioned this year a major goal of ours was to focus on benchmarks with metrics that better indicate user experience rather than being subject to additional layers of indirection in addition to updating our previously used benchmarks. Probably one of the hardest problems to tackle from a testing perspective is capturing what it means to have a smooth and fast phone, and with the right benchmarks you can actually start to test for these things in a meaningful way instead of just relying on a reviewer’s word. In addition to new benchmarks, we’ve attempted to update existing types of benchmarks with tests that are more realistic and more useful rather than simple microbenchmarks that can be easily optimized against without any meaningful user experience improvements. As the Galaxy S7 edge is identical in performance to the Galaxy S7, scores for the Galaxy S7 edge are excluded for clarity.
In browser/JavaScript performance the Galaxy S7 in its Snapdragon 820 variants performs pretty much as you'd expect with fairly respectable performance about on par with the iPhone 6 at least part of the time, which frankly still isn't enough but a lot of this is more due to Google's lack of optimization in Chrome than anything else. The Exynos 8890 version comes a lot closer but it still isn't great. Subjectively browsing performance on the Galaxy S7 with the Snapdragon 820 is still painful with Chrome, and I have to install either a variant of Snapdragon Browser or Samsung's stock browser in order to get remotely acceptable performance. Even then, performance isn't great when compared to Apple's A9-equipped devices. The lack of single thread performance relative to other devices on the market in conjunction with poor software optimization on the part of Google is really what continues to hold OEMs back here rather than anything that Samsung Mobile is capable of resolving.
PCMark shows that the Galaxy S7 is generally well-optimized, with good performance in native Android APIs, although devices like the OnePlus 3 pull ahead in general, likely due to differences in DVFS, lower display resolution, more RAM, and similar changes as the hardware is otherwise quite similar. In general though unless you get something with a Kirin 95x in it you aren't going to get performance much better than what you find in the Galaxy S7, although the software optimization in cases like the writing test could be better for the Snapdragon 820 version of the phone.
As hinted by the PCMark results, the Galaxy S7 with the Snapdragon 820 is really nothing to write home about when it comes to actual software optimizations, while the Exynos 8890 version is significantly faster in comparison. The fastest devices by far here are still the Kirin 950-equipped phones, but even from cold start launches the HTC 10 is comparable, and pulls ahead slightly when the applications are pre-loaded into memory. The OnePlus 3 and Xiaomi Mi5 are closer to what the S820 GS7 should be achieving, which is really more a testament to just how strangely slow the Galaxy S7 with Snapdragon 820 is.
Overall though, the Galaxy S7 in both iterations are acceptably fast for general purpose tasks. However, with that said the Snapdragon 820 variant is noticeably slower, and the software stack seems to be less optimized for whatever reason even after multiple post-launch OTAs and all the latest app updates. Given that these devices have locked bootloaders it's difficult to really go deep and try to figure out exactly what's causing these issues, but it's likely that Samsung Mobile has the engineering staff to do this and resolve these issues as a 600 USD phone really shouldn't be performing worse than a 400 USD phone. On the bright side, the Exynos 8890 variants perform quite well here, with performance comparable to top devices and often beating out Snapdragon 820 devices, although usually not by a huge margin.
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OscarK - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
This is a great article Joshua. It's strange that people would complain, thinking that it is bias simply because you stated the truth and didn't blindly praise it's camera like other reviewers whom somehow have become the embodiment of the likes of Steve McCurry. They might as well say it's bias towards the g5 which you stated is a better still camera (maybe they have some enmity with apple. I don't know). I for one like properly exposed natural photos. I will be getting the one plus 3 though. Loved the review on it.barn25 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I don't know how you all wasnt able to test the 8890 version when pretty much all variants of it support almost all US LTE bands.Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Because I have that unit and I'm on a different continent and I can't achieve good signal conditions to be able to do a apples to apples comparison to other devices. I'll do 820 vs 8890 comparisons under my network but the values will not be representative to other devices.SunnyNW - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
Just a question...but could you guys realistically not ship it back and forth within the four months or so that it took for this review?Jodiuh - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I usually never post about this and I OWN an iPhone, but FOUR MONTHS for a review when you guys only took one week for the last iPhone?I don't know what has happened to this site, but it seems to take forever to get reviews out now if we even get them.
And it's not just cell phones, there's still no 1080/1070/480 reviews either.
:-(
DCide - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
"... as soon as I start looking closer at everything I start to see cases where Samsung just doesn’t seem to care enough. Everything about the phone seems to be targeted towards being a great experience for the first week or two of ownership ..."Spot on! This is exactly how I've seen Samsung mobile devices for a number of years now - I've just never seen it in print before!
This is exactly why I ultimately exclude Samsung from consideration whenever shopping for an Android device.
TheITS - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
This review managed to find only metrics in which the S7 can be directly compared to every other phone and then tells us that the phone as a whole is average. Where is the testing of the unique features it brings to the table like VR and water resistance? The camera is so fast why isn't there a comparison to see if it can capture lifes more transient moments than the rest of the phone market? People want to know whether it's a phone worth buying and living so please next time explore everything the phone can do and not just where it overlaps.I can see that there is a lot of content in the review but it's a shame that the reviewer doesn't seem to have identified what Samsung were trying to do as a whole with the total experience and whether they hit the mark.
theduckofdeath - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
That is unfortunately what Anandtech has been about for about a decade.raptormissle - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
Takes 3 months to review an Android phone yet iPhones get the red carpet treatment around here at anandtech. The old boss must be still calling the shots. Even mechanical keyboards have a higher priority around here.watzupken - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
"The Galaxy S7 is clearly packed with features and ticks all the right boxes, but as soon as I start looking closer at everything I start to see cases where Samsung just doesn’t seem to care enough. Everything about the phone seems to be targeted towards being a great experience for the first week or two of ownership"Despite the review turning up very late, i.e. at least 4 months late, I still appreciate the objective reviews from the site. I have to agree what is mentioned in the conclusion based on my experience with Samsung products over the years. I was actually contemplating to try out the S7 to see if anything changed, but I think I will skip it.
One honest feedback to folks at Anandtech: Objective reviews are highly appreciated, but they need to be fast as well. Using this article as example, 4 months into the product launch means most people have purchased the product, which greatly diminishes the value of the review.
Thank you folks.