Specs are far from the last word on performance. As was pointed out earlier, its not the MHZ is the way the power and architecture is structured. Also megapixels mean very, very little in terms of camera performance. Sure, a 12 is better than a 2. But the difference is reduced as the number gets larger. The step down in Megapixels is a great move. The pixels themselves are much larger on a 12 than on a 18. To put it another way the sensor on a phone is about 1/4 of an inch, the sensor on a DSLR can be 1 1/2 - 2 inches diagonal. Both of them being 18 megapixels... guess which one takes better photos. Its all a matter of balance, but in this case 12 megapixels is better than 18.
You cherry picked the "bad" items on your post, and left out some of the better items. A 3600 or 4000 mah battery is a huge improvement. Add in the built in inefficiencies that come from incremental improvements on memory, screen, and chip architecture, and the battery life should be a noticeable improvement.
One other point, the Note 7 is not intended to be a improvement over the S7, it is intended to compliment it, and extend the line via a different form factor option. This is part of the stated reason why they changed the naming and skipped the Note 6. Very few people will, or should dump their S7 for the newest note, just for an upgraded hardware. The 7 line comes in 4 versions, S7 Standard, S7 Edge, S7 Active and Note 7... all the same with different form factors.