Samsung Galaxy S7 review

My #1 reason to carry a phone is to have access to emails and atttachments, #2 is to make phone calls, and #3 is to take pictures. Thus last Wednesday I decided to switch from an iPhone 6 Plus, which has a good-for-a-smartphone camera, to a Samsung Galaxy S7, which supposedly has a great-for-a-smartphone camera (DxOMark; my results so far).

Samsung disfigures the Android operating system to some extent, but not quite as ruinously as on my old Note 3. The Contacts manager by default seems to sync only with those contacts for which Google has a phone number. (See this posting for how it used to work and especially the link to this demo video.) Samsung cannot seem to leave alone the list of roughly 100,000 people with whom I have ever corresponded by email. If I type “Just” on the keyboard in the Memo app, for example, or anywhere else that the Samsung keyboard is in use, the keyboard offers me a completion option of an email address that starts with “Justin.” This is extremely annoying and there does not seem to be a way of disabling the brain-damaged idea of suggesting random email addresses while leaving the reasonable idea of suggesting English words. Nor does the “dictate with Google voice recognition” icon show up on the Samsung keyboard. Fortunately this can be fixed by downloading and installing the Google keyboard, which has a configurable “suggest contact names” option that is much more reasonable (names of actual contacts, not 100,000 once-contacted email addresses).

The physical design of the device is sort of attractive. Unfortunately, the last time that you will see the device as designed is in the Verizon store. Presumably there are some dexterous folks over in Korea who can use this device in its naked state. If you’re a stupid white man with fat clumsy fingers, however, the bezel of the phone is so thin that the fingers you’re using to grip the phone are perceived as touching the glass, thus rendering the interface unusable. I wrapped the phone in a Tech 21 case partly for protection but mostly so that holding the phone didn’t put in commands. The Samsung Edge is presumably even more of a user interface disaster and the Verizon store employees did not recommend it. The “edge” control is smart up against the on/off button so you’d have to be truly nimble to use it as designed. Plainly the Edge idea can’t work if the phone is wrapped in a truly protective case.

At night it is nice that the phone shows the time, date, and battery charge level continuously on a portion of the OLED screen. The OLED screen is beautiful, but at the default brightness setting of “max brightness” the battery life seems inferior to the iPhone’s. You’ll want a car charger and an office charger! So far I am not missing the larger, but lower-resolution, screen of the iPhone 6 Plus, even when using the Kindle app to read books. (The S7 screen specs are “1440 x 2560 pixels (~577 ppi pixel density)” compared to “1080 x 1920 pixels (~401 ppi pixel density)” on the iPhone 6 Plus according to gsmarena.com.)

The home button is not recessed, unlike the iPhone’s. This led to a lot of inadvertent “device on” time with my Note 3. Instead of fixing the physical design, Samsung has added complexity to the interface with a buried-under-display-and-wallpaper setting called “Keep screen turned off” that says “Prevent the screen from turning on accidentally while the phone is in a dark place such as a pocket or bag.” The home button, if double-tapped, does instantly get to the camera app, even if the phone is otherwise locked. This is easier and quicker than the swipe access on iOS.

The waterproof nature of the device is game-changing if you ever get near swimming pools and/or have kids. You can take a picture while standing in a pool. You can receive a phone call while lying on a pool float. You don’t have to be fearful that a child will knock the phone into water.

The device is easier to use as a flashlight than is an iPhone. You can allocate one of the “quick swipe” buttons to the flashlight on/off button. The device is also easier to use to check the weather. Instead of having to touch the “weather” icon to see the current outside air temperature, it appears in the upper right corner of the home screen, along with a sun/cloud/rain icon. The home screen also lets you say “Ok, Google” and start asking for assistance. It seems to work a lot better than Siri. Samsung Pay supposedly works a lot better than Apple Pay or Android Pay (comparison), but curiously was not included with the phone in the box. Supposedly the Samsung Pay system doesn’t require that the merchant have any special hardware. It simulates the magnetic strip on a physical credit card. It took about two minutes to set up with a Chase Visa card and then worked at Walgreens. The fingerprint reader works better than the one on the iPhone.

Speaking of electromagnetic magic… being able to charge the phone at night by placing it on a little stand is great! (Unfortunately you have to pay $70 extra for the Samsung wireless charger, though it does hold the phone at a good angle for checking the time from almost anywhere in a room.)

If you hate to check voicemail you’ll be pleased to see that the Phone app and the Voicemail app are almost completely separate. If the phone actually did see a call so that it shows up in “Recent” and there was a voicemail message left there will be a subtle tape recorder icon that appears (what do those two reels mean to a Millennial? Why not an icon of a Poulsen wire recorder?).

Samsung’s health tracking app seems to have become less user-friendly compared to what came installed on the Note 3. However, it is still better than Apple’s pathetic effort. You can enter your weight on various days (and/or have a compatible scale push them into the phone) and also a weight goal, but it doesn’t offer the option of the Steve Ward diet.

What about the camera? So far it does seem to be almost as great as everyone says. It is responsive, the autofocus is accurate and fast, and the indoor image quality is far better than the iPhone 6 Plus’s. It is easier to adjust settings than with Apple’s software, though personally I think that the camera on a phone should do the job in Auto mode 99.9% of the time. The camera position on the back of the phone seems more prone to capturing the owner’s fingers than did the iPhone’s camera. Results so far are on Google Photos (which has no ability to caption images; one can type a description but it is deeply buried; I wonder if the team that built Gmail contacts has moved on to the Photos group…).

I’m living with Android right now rather than loving it. iOS has grown in complexity but remains simpler than Android or at least Android+Samsung. The Galaxy S7 seems to have much faster and more powerful hardware than did the iPhone 6 Plus so most stuff happens nearly instantly. On the other hand, oftentimes it is stuff that I didn’t want to happen. On the third hand, there does seem to be an amazing world of capability available to those who have the patience to learn all of the extra features and settings. (Example: if you turn on “Send SOS messages” and press the power key three times it will send a message, including pictures or an audio recording if desired, to emergency contacts.) The device does have an “Easy Mode” that hides most of the complexity. I hadn’t expected to be ready for “Easy Mode” at my current age but I am tempted…

Summary: The whole is slightly less than the sum of the parts, but the sum of the parts is vastly greater than what you can get from Apple right now. Samsung needs to rethink its user interface testing procedures so that testing is accomplished with real Google accounts (e.g., ones that do have 10,000+ email-only “contacts”). Samsung should probably kill more than half of its projects that modify stock Android. Perhaps they need to hire Marie Kondo for a corporate kumbaya session where people can ask if there is anyone on Planet Earth for whom an individual OS tweak could conceivably spark joy.

[Anyone have a good idea for what to do with my old iPhone 6 Plus? It is a 64 GB Verizon version that I don’t think it is locked. I paid $900 for it about nine months ago, supposedly unlocked at a BestBuy, and then activated it on the Verizon network. gazelle.com says that it is now worth $255. Can it be used on a network other than Verizon’s?]

Wishlist:

• I can buy a nearly indestructible $20 flashlight with a rubberized exterior. Why can’t Samsung repackage this phone so that it comes from the factory essentially with the same physical dimensions and feel as the current phone in the Tech 21 case?
• The camera should be twice as thick to accommodate (a) an all-day battery, and (b) a larger camera sensor and lens