Beautiful Design and Out of This World Camera Features Make the Galaxy S7 a Winner

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It is no secret that I’m a fan of Samsung products. I reviewed almost all of the Samsung Galaxy S models, falling in love with each one more deeply than the last. So what’s new with the Samsung Galaxy S7 by Verizon? Plenty! There are so many new features and so many new things to cover.

Beautiful Design

Let’s start with the looks. Just wow. It’s by far one of the most beautiful phones on the market. I was given the gold, model which really is more like a platinum color, to test and it’s just a gorgeous phone. Of course, most people put their phones in case and that covers up much of the beauty of the phone. But I found a workaround. The day I sent the phone back to FedEx, I purchased the same phone. I put the gold S7 in a clear case by Speck, which is “Military-Grade protection that meets or exceeds MIL-STD-810G drop Tested standards.” I also applied a Zagg Invisibleshield Glass screen protector. Love the lifetime guarantee on this product. If you scratch or chip the glass, they will send you a new one!  

In just 24 hours, at least 10 people commented on how beautiful my phone is.

Camera: Dual-pixel technology

The camera is by far my favorite most useful feature on this phone.

Most smartphones take beautiful photos. It’s just a given. So what makes this one unique? Dual-pixel technology.  What is that? Well, previously you only found this in DSLR cameras. This is the first instance of dual-pixel technology in a smartphone. What does that mean for you? You can leave the DSLR and your iPhone at home.

But seriously.  For you, it means rapid auto-focus, which gives you faster shooting capabilities while producing premium image quality, even in low light situations. At the private Samsung party held at the Evansville Verizon Wireless store, the Samsung rep did a great job demonstrating this. She challenged one of the guests with an iPhone to a shoot out. The true-to-color difference was incredible. The zoom was way better and there just was no comparison in the low light test.

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Samsung cameras are way better than my iPhone. #VZEvansville http://ift.tt/1WqdLUk

The Galaxy S7 is the first smartphone with dual-pixel technology, so it captures better photos in low-light environments and focuses faster than the blink of an eye.

The golden sun made it look more yellow. White magnolia.

See this Instagram photo by @danamnelson * 7 likes

I love to take photos of flowers. I also like getting really close. In the past I have found this to be challenging. If the flower moves at all in the wind, the shot is blurry. I usually back out farther than I want and zoom in. It helps getting clearer, more in-focus photos. With this camera, I was snapping pics all over the place in high winds and really close up. The dual-pixel technology was able to grab the image and take clear, close-range shots that were moving!

The wind was blowing. No time to focus, yet the result is stunning. #nofilter @SamsungMobileUS #S7

See this Instagram photo by @danamnelson * 7 likes

Camera: Add ons There are some amazing camera add ons that you can download from the Samsung store. They are free, but you do need a Samsung account, which is also free. I want to cover two of them for you. Animated GIF camera and the Surround Shot. There are some others that are well worth the time to investigate – these were just my favorite. Camera: Animated GIF20160417_153046 Ok – I have to admit something. When GIFs started making a comeback I was a tad worried. I remember a time when GIF on your website was all the rage… Wait! What? Some are still around? Ok, so this is what I was afraid of: http://www.dpgraph.com/ I also confess that even as a tech person, I find making your own GIFs time consuming and annoying. There are more and more programs out there that will let you make them, but uploading them is often a challenge.  The Animated GIF app is a free download that is so super-simple to use. You just hold down the shutter button and the phone automatically stitches them together. Go to the gallery and share on your favorite social network, or email it to a friend. Camera: Surround Shot At the Verizon store, they showed us a virtual tour of a local area using the Gear VR and the Samsung Galaxy S7.  The sales rep told us about Surround Shot. Again, it’s a free app that you download. Capturing a Surround Shot is easy, but takes some patience. It shows you a grid with a circle and a dot. When you pan the camera over to get the dot right in the center of the circle, the camera captures an image. Then the grid has blue arrows showing you which way to go to get the next dot in the circle. You go all the way around in a circle. Once an initial 360 degree shot is taken, you start over moving up or down on the grid until you have captured the entire view. This can be viewed on the phone or used in the Gear VR.   Surround Shot: An issue I first noticed that when you try to text or email a Surround Shot, it sends it as a really flat squishy .jpg. I looked online and didn’t find much. This blog by Alex Dobie was the best I found. He suggests that you share it to Google +, which converts it and maintains the image. 

Dana M. Nelson – Google+

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Camera: Double Tap to Take a Shot

Ever needed to take a photos really quickly, you grab your phone and unlock, only it doesn’t? So you do it again and this time you opened another app because you were stil swiping and it had already opened. Then you finally get the camera open and your shot is gone. Sound familiar? The Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S7, and the Galaxy S7 edge all have the double tap to take a shot feature. You simply hit the home button 2 times and your camera is open and ready.

S6 Issues Resolved

Remember my S6 review? It was a deal breaker for me for a phone not have an SD card. The S7 has a SD card slot! And with this camera, you are going to need it! I also only noticed a few times, and only with continuous use, did it get hot. Well done Samsung!

As you noticed, I had to buy it. I was so impressed with the photos, ease of use, and the beauty of this phone, I just had to own it. If you are looking to upgrade to a really powerful phone, the Samsung Galaxy S7 is my top pick! Click here to view the current deals for Verizon that make buying this phone a little easier.

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Long Long Ago… I got my hands on a Galaxy S6

It’s another sad day with a FedEx box reluctantly leaving my hands.  This time I’m mourning the Samsung Galaxy S6 from Verizon Wireless. As a Samsung product, I already knew I was going to love it. They just haven’t made much I didn’t like lately. So much so, I’m almost a complete convert. (I still need a TV and some Galaxy Gear.)

First Impressions: It’s a totally new look.

Remember when iphones were still new? They were the icon of smart phones. You could spot one across the room and you just knew it was an iphone. Androids don’t typically have that recognizability “Oh that’s a….” reaction. But that’s the first thing I noticed: Other people noticing my phone and commenting: “Oh nice, the S6?” or “Oh the S6! Don’t you just love it?” Or “That’s the S6, how do you like it?”

The look and feel is so different than the previous plastic bodies we are used to from Samsung.

Design Features:

  • .1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display

  • Slim and sophisticated, lightweight design

  • Metal bezel

  • Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4 on the front and back of the phone

It’s like THE dress: Is it Blue or Black?

That Gorilla® Glass over the black body creates an interesting optical effect. It looks blue in some light. I always encase my personal phones from the time they come out of the box. This is a necessity as I am just tough on phones. But the Gorilla® Glass makes this phone as tough as it is beautiful. It’d be a shame to cover it up.

Can it keep up?

I’ve read a few places that people were disappointed with the battery life. I ran this phone on a full days use, it got gamed on hard anytime a tester kid was near and I never noticed it being an issue. This ‘how long can I use the battery’ test was repeated several times with the same result.  I was able to drain it if I used the hotspot for more than a brief time, but that is expected.  It clearly warns that it should be plugged in while using the hotspot feature.

I was however disappointed that this newest in the Galaxy line has eliminated the removable battery. My phones usually outlive the lifetime of the first battery.

(Photo : AndroidGameE | YouTube)

Lightning speed

Operating on the Android 5.0 Lollipop and having a 64-bit, octa-core Exynos 7420 and 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM This phone is fast. How fast? Faster than your iphone. No, really, TechTimes did a side by side test, you be the judge.

Storage

This phone, like all smart phones these days, comes in varying sizes. 32GB, 64GB, 128GB.

The kicker here is no SD slot to bump it up.  I live on my phone.  I’m not sure how easy it would be for me to adapt to this setback. It forces the user to utilize more cloud based storage. Even though I do use many cloud based apps like evernote, dropbox, and Google apps, I still store much on my phone.

Camera

With the main camera boasting 16 MP, 2988 x 5312 pixels, optical image stabilization, autofocus and LED flash, it is definitely a powerful image capturing tool. By far my favorite things about this phone are some of the small changes in the camera features like the wide angle selfie. The rear facing camera is not only a higher resolution (Iphone’s main camera is 8 megapixel and the rear facing camera is a whopping 1.2 megapixel.) better overall camera, it took the panoramic feature and put it on the rear facing camera so you can take large group selfies and get everyone in on the fun. It also has a beauty mode, HRD, voice capture and more.

 

 

Overall

I’m torn. I really thought this would be my next phone. I have 3 things to consider. Battery – Am I willing to risk my phone dying when the battery life is up? Storage – Can I change my digital behaviors and have a phone with a hard limit on storage? Will I like the S6 Edge better? (That’s coming next month for me to test drive so I will update this blog when I get an answer to that question.)

Disclosure: I don’t get paid to review these phones. I don’t get to keep any other the cool stuff I review for Verizon. They don’t even give me a discount on my bill or my phones. 🙁 I did get some cool swag from Samsung once, but if they ever wanted to share some cool tech, I wouldn’t turn it down! I don’t receive any payments or discounts from Samsung to be such an avid fan.  I just love them and their products.