IMHO, my international,
G900F, model of the Galaxy S5 has been outstanding. Now on its 19th official Samsung update since release, it is still going strong.
Just a couple of points about the U.S. models of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge....
Because of S7's modem that is built into the chipset, the U.S. models cannot use the the octa core, Exynos, chipset, (dubbed the Beast from the East), because of Verizon, Sprint and U.S. Cellular's old CDMA networks, as it only supports GSM. Therefore, Samsung have had to give U.S. and Chinese devices, (who also have CDMA), the overclocked and slower, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, quad core, chipset which supports CDMA, (Qualcomm are a large stakeholder in CDMA by the way), and there is no doubt that the U.S. and Chinese models are sub par in performance when compared to the Global, Exynos, models used in the other 194 countries. See video.
The other thing worth remembering is that the
shop display models are usually the ones that Samsung manufacture for the purpose and usually end in an X, (i.e. G930X/G935X). These are wi-fi only models that are unable to make calls and are on an, "adapted", firmware for display and therefore do not accurately reflect, "all", aspects of the actual model. They are also not worth stealing. Also, they are designed to run a bright display mode 24/7 in a loop and this is why we sometimes hear posters complain that they have seen screen burn on models in the shops.
Personally, I fancied a change and decided to give the, fairly, new start up company, OnePlus, a go and have the new
OnePlus 3 model which has the same Snapdragon 820, quad core, chipset as the U.S. S7/Edge. In the U.K. this retails at £329 and in the U.S. $399 as compared to the S7 at £569/US$740 or the Edge at £639/US$830. Whilst it may lack some of the bells and whistles of the S7/Edge, (it is not water resistant and does not have a curved Edge screen), it comes without Samsung and carrier bloatware and is rootable and actively supported with updates, 5 regular OS updates in 14 weeks and 3 Community Builds for rooted users. Above all, it is, with 6GB of RAM, fast. See An Tu Tu screenshots...
