Re: Note 7 Reviews Are Up
I quote Anandtech's review:
"The final thing I want to discuss as far as the software experience goes is performance. While TouchWiz is generally performant I still find lag here similar to the Galaxy S7. To prove I’m not crazy I did a very simple scrolling test between the HTC 10 and Galaxy Note7 on the same application on the same pages doing a very slow scroll on content that had already been preloaded and without any notable transitions. The Galaxy Note7 consistently drops frames right as the scrolling stops while the HTC 10 stays fairly close to 60 FPS throughout this very simple test, which just highlights the kind of frustrations that I have with Samsung software. I’m fairly confident that Samsung has the engineering staff capable of resolving these issues so it’s frustrating to see how this kind of thing just never seems to get fixed. These kinds of issues make it easy to think that Samsung really only cares about things that can be easily marketed rather than things that make for a good user experience, and judging by how Samsung can quickly turn around and fix things like iconography they need to take smoothness seriously if they want to continue justifying their pricing structure.
Overall, I think TouchWiz is a pretty acceptable experience, but it’s still lacking the level of polish I’m expecting from a major high-end smartphone these days. Design is a lot better and things like collapsing multiple note applications into a single application are great, but Samsung clearly still has the impulse to add random features that don’t really have a discernable purpose other than marketing. The iris scanner is not a marketing gimmick at all, but things like the Translate function really don’t make any sense and shouldn’t involve the S-Pen at all. It might be nice to have a full page translation with the ability to select the words to be translated similar to Google Translate, but hovering over each word and waiting for translation is not a very good user experience. Similarly, things like not being able to swipe across tabs in some apps while being able to do the same thing in others is just inconsistent and not very helpful. The Note7 is not horribly choppy by any definition, but it still clearly drops frames in places that other high end smartphones don’t. I get that marketing gimmicks help to move a phone, but I would rather see developer time spent eliminating frame drops and improving touch latency rather than adding a half-hearted translation feature and animated GIFs."
Software UX: TouchWiz Redesigned - The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
"With all of this said I think the Note7 is fairly checkered. I’m sure there are people that want to buy one because it’s the only phablet on the market that really does a stylus well and if you’re someone that wants the Note7 for the stylus then you should stop reading now and go buy one because everything else on the market won’t meet your needs. If the stylus is just something that’s nice for you to have then the calculus gets much more difficult and the recommendation is no longer unconditional. The Galaxy S7 edge is currently about 750 USD and you can easily find people reselling new ones for any operator or international variants on Amazon for 600 USD or so. The Note7 does appreciably improve on the Galaxy S7 Edge, but it’s basically the S7 edge in a new package and with an S-Pen. You also get an extra 32 GB of storage which does justify the extra 100 USD that bumps the Note7 up to 850 USD.
With all of that said, I get the distinct sense that it will be much harder to justify the price well before the end of this year. The camera quality is kind of a disappointment given all of the hype at the launch of the Galaxy S7 given the dual pixel sensor and larger 1.4 micron pixels when the camera quality itself is not really an improvement over the Galaxy Note5 and is beaten out by the HTC 10. The software experience still shows dropped frames. There are still software features that feel like obvious gimmicks. The design is still lacking ID detailing. I’m sure other people will praise this device anyways but when a phone is this expensive and with smartphones in general getting polished to a mirror sheen each scratch becomes more obvious no matter how minor."
Final Words - The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
. If they would just clarify their pricing discussions a bit more in this way, perhaps by saying something like my "biggest beef with the phone is the price for what you get - if you have to pay full price to get it", AnandTech could be a bit more precise - as they like to be 
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