(This is gonna be a bit of a long one, so bear with me).
After using my Black Onyx SM-N930F variant of the Galaxy Note7 for about a week, here are my initial thoughts and impressions on the device.
CAMERA
S PEN
BATTERY
OTHER NOTES
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Galaxy Note7 is a bit of a revelation for me. Having once been a vocal critic of Samsung, criticizing almost everything they did whether it's due to TouchWiz or their build-quality, it seems that Samsung has started to understand what it had to do, and they've started to get my attention seriously with the Galaxy S7, which refined the S6 while fixing many of its flaws, resulting in a Samsung device which, for the first time in a while, I actually really want. The Galaxy Note7 eventually became my first Samsung device in a long while because I wanted to see how they have changed since the last (sour) experience I had with them. So far, I'm pretty happy with what they've done and I'm hoping that they continue to actively listen to user feedback because the only thing holding back the Note7 from pure greatness is some missing S Pen features, alongside some performance issues, notably on the Snapdragon variant. Once those are sorted, we have a pretty solid contender for Phone of the Year in 2016.
Good job, Samsung! (I never thought I'd say this 3 years after ditching the S3).
After using my Black Onyx SM-N930F variant of the Galaxy Note7 for about a week, here are my initial thoughts and impressions on the device.
EXTERIOR
- The design is absolutely gorgeous. One of the best looking phones I've seen and held. The curved back and symmetrical design helps with handling, and the subtle curve makes it one of the easier phones to hold that are 5.7-inches or above. That said, it's also a fingerprint magnet, and if you have sweaty palms like me, it's going to be quite a fish, so a skin or a case is recommended.
- I can't really say much about the display. It's typical Samsung AMOLED. Super bright, great contrast, solid viewing angles and is actually not too far off actual color accuracy when you set the display in "Basic" (sRGB) mode. I keep mine at "Adaptive Display" because my guilty eyes are spoiled by oversaturation, though.
- Reviews don't usually mention this, but Samsung's buttons are actually one of the better ones I've used. They stick out far enough so you can easily feel them and they have excellent tactile-feedback, even when they're covered by rubberized buttons when in a case. However, I wish the power button was a touch lower, as you can accidentally hit either that or the volume-down button if you're trying to press either. The home button was also a nice improvement from the last Samsung I've owned (Galaxy S3), with much better tactile feedback, and the embedded fingerprint sensor is also one of the fastest I have used after a recent OTA, with it unlocking straight away when pressing the button to wake the screen, similar to the iPhone 6s, which was very unexpected.
- Fit-and-finish was also very solid. There's hardly any QC or build quality issues with the device. It felt solid and doesn't have any weird sounds when it is shaken or moved. However, the clicky-part of the S Pen does wobble quite a bit on my unit. Not sure if this is a common thing, but it does get annoying for a bit after a while. Not that it's a serious deal-breaker, but for an $850+ device, very solid build quality on even something that some might call "an accessory" would be a nice thing to see.
- Feel and hold is actually a strong point. While I didn't have much of an issue holding the S7 edge, I did need some practice in holding it right, which was a bit of a challenge, really. With the Note7, getting used to it was much easier. Of course, due to the curved display, there will be some instances of accidental touches, but they happen much less often compared to the S7e and overall, it's just easier and nicer to hold.
SOFTWARE AND PERFORMANCE
- The last time I gave TouchWiz a proper run-down was with the Galaxy S3, and TW at the time left me with a pretty sour taste in my mouth. The overall look and aesthetics didn't really age well over time, and the performance issues that left my unit almost unusable at times was an exercise in frustration. The Galaxy S6 and Note5 gave me a glimmer of hope that Samsung would redeem themselves in the software department and with the Note7, they have....mostly.
- First off, TouchWiz is much cleaner in terms of looks this time around. Stuff just feels more organized, especially in the settings menu, and the overall aesthetics feel fresh and much more in keeping with current UX design trends. I'm still not a fan of the heavy usage of the color white throughout the UI, but Samsung's theme store returns and a true dark theme was just an install away, which really improved the look and feel to me, complemented by the much better system touch sounds.
- But this isn't a light skin. Oh, no. TouchWiz is still very feature-packed, especially with the S Pen stuff. There's stuff like multi-window, pop-up play, an always-on display and much more. There's still quite a lot of features packed into the phone, which is a Samsung thing, which some will like and others may not.
- The Note7 is a relatively fast phone, especially on this Exynos model. Apps load relatively quickly for real-world use, multitasking wasn't too much of an issue with only a few apps reloading from scratch (though it could be slightly less aggressive as the phone has about 750-1GB of free RAM on average) and I didn't feel like I was missing a beat when switching back and forth between it and the iPad Pro 12.9.
- However, let's be honest here. This phone DOES lag. However, before you raise those torches and pitchforks, some clarification is needed. The phone only lags when you seriously push it, like installing 50+ apps in the background while watching a YouTube video when your video is being uploaded to Facebook, etc. Scrolling performance is largely fine on mine, but I did experience some dropped frames, especially when opening the Edge panels. When it comes to the aforementioned lag, though, there is one nagging issue. One serious enough that it needs its own bullet point.
- The serious issue, though, is the serious keyboard lag on SwiftKey. It's terrible. If you type slowly, it has no issue keeping up, but if you type really fast, the keyboard really struggles to keep up. On the stock keyboard, this doesn't really happen. I'm not sure if this is the fault of the software or SwiftKey, but given that SK has also started to act up on my stock Android-powered devices, I'm not ready to blame TW....yet.
- Oh, and if you're curious about benchmarks, it scores 135,000+ on Antutu and 2100+ on Geekbench 3's single-core and 6000+ on Geekbench 3's multi-core. Don't take those too seriously, though.
- Overall, the software is much improved compared to a lot of previous Samsungs, and performance has also seen a healthy improvement over the truly-awful performance from past Samsungs. However, it's not perfect, and Samsung still has some work to do in order to further refine and polish the experience, especially on the Snapdragon variant.
CAMERA
- The Note7's camera is pretty much the same story as the S7 edge. As in, it's one of the best phone cameras you can get right now. It may have dropped in megapixel-count from 16MP to 12MP, but you really only lose the 16:9 crop and overall image quality has seen an improvement, although it is not immediately apparent if you look at them as the camera on both the Note5 and Note7 are great.
- The app has also cleaned up. Instead of a ton of buttons to change modes, a swipe gesture takes you to your different modes. I find this more intuitive than the S7's camera app as it doesn't mean you have to reach over to a button as you can just swipe to reveal all the different modes. However, I wish the camera settings menu didn't completely block the composition window, and I wish the Pro mode has extra ISO options because a max ISO of 800 is rather low.
- I can't really comment on the selfie camera since I never take selfies unless I'm in a group, but it's pretty much the same story as the S7, in being a solid selfie shooter, especially for group shots.
S PEN
- The Note isn't a Note without its S Pen. And I've been really addicted to it. It's really become second nature now for me to just whip out that pen and start jotting away notes or anything.
- Okay, I didn't really do much noting, but I did find it extremely useful as a precise input method, like moving a slider to the best position and also using the brush feature in photo-editing apps like Snapseed.
- Smart Select is also my new way of capturing only a portion of the screen that I want to share, as I find it much easier and faster to just select a portion of the screen I want to capture and save it rather than saving the entire screenshot, and then cropping for the part I want to share. I wonder why others don't do it, even if we have to use a finger. Oh, and the GIF maker thing is boss. Pretty much the one thing I play around with all-day. No guilt here.
- Samsung Notes is a disappointment, though. We thought it would be a revelation in the world of Samsung and their endless number of apps for one task, where everything related to noting would be in one app, but instead, Samsung Notes ended up being more like a generic notes app. Admittedly, it has some nice functionality, but some features that were very useful, like Action Memo, is gone, which is quite the disappointment. (It is coming back soon, however). I hope Samsung slowly adds in the same functionality that we loved to use on previous Notes as part of Samsung Notes and made it something that we thought it would be.
- The pen itself is pretty nice to use, though. The smaller tip allows for much more precise writing and the higher pressure sensitivity meant that it didn't take too long for me to adjust to writing on something that isn't paper.
BATTERY
- So far, battery life has been good, but not great as of this time. The Note7's 3500mAh battery plus efficient internals got me through the day with about 20% left to spare by around 8PM, which is not bad at all, especially since I've been using it for quite a ton, especially for chatting with friends and others on Messenger and Hangouts, browsing Facebook and Google+ while watching some YouTube videos and browsing the web regularly on LTE + Wi-Fi at 40-75% brightness (with some instances of full 100% brightness). However, seeing that Android System does drain the battery quite a bit, it can definitely do better. Perhaps Android System's usage will calm down as time goes on.
- But charging has been adequately fast. On Samsung's Adaptive Fast charger, going from 20% to 100% took around 1 hour and 10 minutes. That's not bad at all for a quick top-off, especially for a large 3500mAh battery. The interesting question, however, is how Samsung implemented AFC/QC 2.0 on a USB-C port. We'll have to wait until folks like Benson and Nathan test it, but so far, power isn't much of an issue.
OTHER NOTES
- The speaker is mediocre. It's muffled, has a very "mono" tone and is one of the softer ones I've heard. It gets the job done for speakerphone calls, but for media, you're better off with headphones.
- The iris scanner works surprisingly well, being able to detect my iris very quickly, even to the point where the preview window doesn't show up. However, it's limited in its functionality right now, but it does pave the way for more potential.
- Have not tested water-resistance because I'm not going to risk my $850+ device of potential water damage if things go south, especially since Samsung won't replace water-damaged phones under warranty.
- Good Lock does work on the Note7, but I'd recommend waiting to see if an update comes out, because it's clearly not made for it yet, as the scaling is large, iris unlock is unsupported and performance actually seems to be slightly worse.
- Yeah, not impressed by the "Device Maintenance" part of the settings. Samsung, do you really have to partner with Cheetah Mobile for stuff like this?
FINAL THOUGHTS
Good job, Samsung! (I never thought I'd say this 3 years after ditching the S3).
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