Got my new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear VR today!

Got my new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear VR today!
Loving it!

 

Want it so bad.. I have a Galaxy Note 4 and man it is big. Still though who can not love a waterproof, samsung phone?

 

I loved my Note 4 though. I was switching from AT&T to Verizon and the Note 4 wouldn't work with them and why I got a new phone... otherwise I'd probably waited to see what the new Note 6 had to offer in September. The Note 4 is a great phone!

 

Added a new pic of my toys showing the headphones used with the VR and my home screen on my S7 Edge. I'm having fun!


....and since this phone is a fingerprint magnet and a tad slippery in the hand, I ordered a set of skins from Dbrand to take care of both problems.
https://dbrand.com/shop/galaxy-s7-edge

 

Tell me something please:

1) What does this VR use? how and what can I use it for?

2) Is the S7 smaller, bigger, or the same as my BlackBerry PRIV? I don't want any more small phones. I loved the size of the iPhone 4S

 

1) What does this VR use? how and what can I use it for?
http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/wearables/gear-vr/

2) Is the S7 smaller, bigger, or the same as my BlackBerry PRIV? I don't want any more small phones. I loved the size of the iPhone 4S
Bigger as it's the Edge. Same size as the iPhone 6s Plus.
Here is a comparison of the two:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonk...xy-s7-vs-apple-iphone-6s-review/#44ceaf8e1c69

 

Thank God I waited before getting this phone, this issue seems to be plaguing many people:

Unresponsive black screen on S7

 

You are in the minority as I don't have that problem, and I'm not seeing it on the Android forum I hang out at either. Usually problems you hear about, but there are millions without problems that you don't hear about... very common.

 

Oh I didn't get that phone yet bro, just wanted to wait a while before getting it to see if there are any major issues. I got hit by the famous unresponsive screen after sleep bug and fast charge randomly not working on my S6 Edge+:

Freezing & unresponsive

Long delay when waking up phone

Galaxy S6 Edge+ Feezing Problem.

unable to unlock the phone, touchwiz not responding

fast charge not working

That problem made me really cautious before buying another Samsung phone as the Note 5 also has the same issues as reported in XDA forums.

Now I know the S7 is a totally new phone, I am just being cautious and patient to see if there are any major issues that I need to be worried about before shelling out my money on it again.

 

Wow Phoenix, that is a lot of problems! Do you still have those problems or have they been fixed? That S6 Edge + is suppose to be the best phone out there last year.

I have notice that once in a great while the phone freezes and I have to hit my home or on/off button to unfreeze it. I don't like that and if it keeps up, I'll take my phone back and replace it. If it keeps happening, I'll get a different phone. I will update any problems and good stuff as they happen in these threads.

I was really happy with my Note 4 and didn't want last years s7 edge or Note 5 because they dropped the microSD & removable battery. This year they brought back the microSD and the battery is much bigger and I can see the real world difference there. Plus, I just switched from AT&T to Verizon and my Note 4 won't work with Verizon, hence the new phone.

 

Here is my history with Samsung phones brah:

1) My dad gifted me a Note 4, I loved it, was one of the snappiest phones I had, 0 lag, excellent camera. A couple of weeks later, Lollipop 5.0.1 update came along so I updated thinking it would be better. I was wrong, the phone became laggy and the battery life went down from 2 days to 1 day.

I then downgraded to Kit Kat only to be bugged constantly about the upgrade. So I updaed again but this time tried a factory reset. No joy, after a while it becomes so laggy I hated it because I knew how well my Note 4 performed.

The Lollipop 5.1.1 update was delayed so much by Samsung on purpose to force people to upgrade to the S6/Note 5 it seemed.

2) So I upgraded to the S6 Edge+ 64GB as in Dubai they only sold the 32GB of the Note 5 and they are basically the same exact phones inside minus the S Pen which I never used anyway

The phone was the snappiest 0 lag phone I ever had in my life! Loved the camera, battery life was meh despite that huge battery it sports but it wasn't that bad. It just wouldn't last 2 days like the Note 4 but that is understandable due to the extra cpu speed and stuff.

Then I started noticing that freezing after the phone has gone into sleep mode for a while. It is not juts a cosmetic glitch, imagine if you would call me for example, I would pick up the phone to answer but the touches don't register so I cannot answer you. After a while, all the touches/swipes that I made all register at once as if the phone just woke up and remembered all of them at once.

Samsung then released a firmware update for both the S6 edge+ and the Note 5 at the same time. While that did improve things a bit, it still did happen a lot.

So I sold it. Now I lost 25% of the value of the Note 4 and 30% of the value of the S6 edge+ 64GB which I bought with an additional accidental damage protection.

So someone who was bitten so hard by Samsung would definitely be afraid to buy his next Samsung phone you see. That and the fact that they are the last to receive OS updates killed it for me. All others manufacturers released Marshmallow and Samsung was the last.

Not bashing them just stating facts, their phones are awesome and have the best phone cameras hands down. I just want more quality control, speedier OS releases, and hopefully less Samsung bloatware out of the box.

Don't rush into returning your phone, just see maybe they release a firmware fix if you were experiencing any issues with it. I hope you don't

Love Flossy Carter's Real Reviews, get your pop corn ready, this is a long video:

 

very nice! Been thinking of getting one of these myself, how you finding it?

 

Except for an occasional screen freeze, liking it fine. Extremely fast smartphone and terrific camera, best I've seen yet for a smartphone in low light. Lot faster than the Note 4 which had a lag before shooting the pictures.

 

cool, think I will make it my upgrade then.

 

Depending on where you go and live, they're throwing in free stuff when you get a new S7 or S7 Edge. Things like VR, microSD cards, portable battery. I got all three of those and a $250 Costco cash card at Costco Verizon when I got mine on March 11th.

 

cool! Thanks for letting me know!

 

Autofocus on s7 is absolutely amazing, friend of mine got it and it's focus is DSLR fast. Unfortunately I use pen and need to wait for Note 6. As far as Phoenix story, I'm actually surprised for 2 reasons:
1. He said himself updates created most of the problems on his phones, yet no timely updates is his main complain. Maybe updates are not that necessary, or even desired and they can be turned off. I'm on Kitkat, phone works great, I ain't fixing it if it ain't broke.
2. Also, Phoenix is one of the most active, helpful and knowlegeable members here, he is an author of numerous tutorials and know hows, yet it seems his knowledge of Windows didn't teach him any lessons toward Android, need to root and take control, just like Windows, those little tweaks make all the difference, same with Android, but you need to root and put some effort. Get rid of the bloat and battery will be good and no problems. My phone used to discharge overnight 5,10, even 15%, when it wasn't even used, now if it's more than 3% I'm looking for what's wrong with it. Android is worse than Win10, when it comes to privacy and if you start application once, it will keep loading into memory, on every reboot, even if you never use it again etc. etc. Phoenix, if you want your phone to run well, XDA is your friend.

 

Hey Pete, thanks for the info... it's been a few years since I rooted...and it was always after the warranty expired. I'm a bit apprehensive to do so with a new expensive phone as it voids the warranty if you root. By the time the warranty expires, I usually have the bugs worked out, such as on my last phone, the Note 4. Thoughts on that?

 

I think Chainfire has root for most phones and Android versions, but it's tripping Knox, however I think there was root method for older firmware that worked without tripping Knox, (towel root) but I don't remember specifics as which version did it work on. Also my understanding is, there is a method to reset tripped Knox on some Exynos phones, but not Qualcom. The funny part about tripped Knox and warranty is that it depends where you live, in some places it would probably be illegal to refuse warranty on broken phone with tripped Knox if one had clearly nothing to do with the other. I know for a fact people send back phones with tripped knox to T-mobile, for jump upgrade and had no problem whatsoever. On the other hand some people claim Samsung refused warranty repair because of Knox, very confusing.
IMO all Notes, (except Note 5, which was disappointing) are top shelf models at the time of release and if you use s-pen, like I do, there is nothing else like it.
I just hope Note6 will have everything, including kitchen sink and IR blaster, like the flagship model supposed.

 

hey bro, what are your impressions of this phone after using it for a few days? any quirks you discovered?

 

FYI, I got an S7 and love it so far....

My recent phones experiences:

I live in Dubai and bought the Exynos version since that's what we get here, same as the UK.

I had a Galaxy S6 edge+ 64GB and sold it after 2 months due to an annoying bug where the phone seems to freeze for a while after it goes into sleep mode. Samsung issued a firmware update to fix it but it didn't help much so I got sick of this bug and sold it. Then comes the other problem of weak signal reception which I heard is a common thing in Samsung phones so I didn't want to get another Samsung phone for a while.

I then bought an iPhone 6S which was awesome, great battery life, but I hated the fact that I need to use iTunes to copy files/mp3s to/from the phone and got tired of this within 2 weeks then sold it.

Next, I got a Nexus 6P, amazing pure Android experience, very snappy, but it had the worst virtual keyboard in any phone I had before, I could never type so fluentls always making mistakes, especially that narrow spacebar key that I never seem to get right so sentences come out with no spacing between words. I tried SwiftKey but it was no better. Never buying a Huawei phone again! So I sold it and got a BlackBerry PRIV. all was great, loved the physical keyboard, but the battery life despite it sporting a 3410mAH battery was horrible, you could just hold the phone in your hand and watch the battery percentage drop very fast. Then came this fatal bug:

Contacts disappear a few minutes after I add them

That's a show stopper for me.

So I thought I have no choice but to give Samsung another chance and was contemplating between getting the S7 or the S7 edge, but then I remembered how I hated those big phones, so I went with the S7, even though it has a smaller 3000 mAH battery, bear in mind that it powers a smaller screen so it wouldn't be that bad.

After using it for 2 days I think it's the best phone I've ever owned, very decent battery life, by the end of the day I still have 50-60%, I am a moderate user. Thanks to Marshmallow's doze feature, the standby time is excellent, radio signal has been improved, there is 0 lag in the phone and no freezing bugs like with my previous S6 Edge+. Best of all is the size is just perfect, not too small and not too big, just good enough to watch videos when you need to and small enough to operate with one hand and easily put in your pocket.

I got it with the SPIGEN Thin Fit case and also ordered a SPIGEN Neo Hybrid Case which I should get soon.

 

Its rather unfortunate that Samsung locked the bootloader on the T-Mobile US version. I was going to get an S7 Edge until I found out that Samsung screwed up and locked the bootloader on it. Looks like I'm keeping my Note 5 indefinitely because they don't even have root for it yet. Samsung made a major screw up with the encrypted bootloader. T-Mobile doesn't ask phone manufacturers to lock anything other than the SIM unlike Verizon and AT&T so yeah. I'd love to see the return rate T-Mobile is seeing because of this.

 

Awesome mini review of the S7:

 

I've previously said I've sworn off non-Nexus Android devices because of the software update situation with carrier-branded Android phones, but Samsung is REALLY testing my resolve here. I love the case design, screen quality, camera quality front and rear (front-facing cameras are how I capture moments with my boys, since my wife rarely takes pictures), waterproofing, microSD expansion, and physical home button (including double-tap-to-launch-camera, a feature any parent trying to capture a fleeting moment would appreciate).

I love that they've bucked the industry trend of "thinner is better" and made a phone thicker just to accommodate more battery and reduce the camera hump. Something I hope other OEMs will do as well.

And I love that the 5.1" model has the same internals and screen quality as the phablet model, unlike the Nexus 5X (which is decidedly midrange compared to the 6P).

 

I'd wait for the new Nexus... Seriously, my Note 5 STILL doesn't have Marshmallow despite a partially working leak that came all the way back in October!

With N right around the corner, I'd wait. That's what I plan to do.

 

I'll wait until the unveiling to see what it is (probably May), but I don't want to wait until next fall to get a new phone, and my carrier doesn't have the best record of acivating Nexus phones (it'll activate the 6 and 5X but not the 6P).

Yeah, the software update issue is really Samsung's Achilles heel.

 

whatever you do, please don't buy a Nexus *if* it was made by Huawei, my Nexus 6P was the worst phone I had, horrible virtual keyboard, Huawei = garbage

The Nexus 6 was awesome because it was made by LG

 

The virtual keyboard is not Huawei's fault. And that does not make the phone bad. There are a lot of alternatives on the App store which one may find better suited to their needs. Unless the issue is hardware, it is not the manufacturers fault.
Huawei does not have a say on what Google decides to put on the device on the software end.
I know a lot of people who are using the 6P and love the virtual keyboard, so its more of a preference issue.

Might not want to crucify a brand without knowing or explaining what the exact issue is. I have the HTC One m8 and hate the HTC keyboard, what did i do ? Just installed a different keyboard, been using it fine for the last 2 years.

Come on man, you are better than this.

 

I tried SwiftKey, no better. There is a problem with the space bar, it's a hit or miss when pressing it so most my sentences appear like "hibloodhawkhowareyoutoday?whatareyourcpuocsettings?"

Next, my cats at me USB-C long charging cable, so I went to Huawei, they said they don't have a replacement, I asked can you order it for me? Nope. Any expected date to get it? Nope.

That's the official Huawei service center.

I will never touch a Huawei phone after this experience.

just my 2 cents worth

 

Weird, over here they gladly shipped 2 extra cables to my sister who placed an order for 1.
Haven't really heard anything about any touch screen based issues. I used the 6P for a while, and didn't have issues typing. It is a tad bit tall for small hands though.

But yeah they should have helped you out. Seems to be a regional customer issue. Which is seriously disappointing.

 

maybe that's part of why I am disappointed in them.

What's worse, is they hever had a service center here, they recently opened it after the release of the 6P to cater to the expanding customer base. I initially though WOW! Great, now we have an official service center for Huawei, it looks very elegant with nice decoration, only the service you get there is appalling.

 

What? To my knowledge, all Nexus devices have Google keyboard, not an OEM-specific keyboard. And the Nexus 6 was made by Motorola.

 

I don't mean about the actual app. I meant there is an issue with the screen that makes it not so responsive to the touches. maybe it was just my phone I don't know.

 

I haven't heard that from any other Nexus 6P owner.

 

Nexus 6 was awesome because it was made by Motorola. Everything LG makes is trash.

 

ooops, my bad.

I am pwnt

 

I've been reading so many issues with these devices that I think I'll keep my Exynos Note 5 until the Note 6 comes out. As badly as I want to go back to Snapdragon and give TouchWiz the boot (Samsung doesn't release Exynos source code so attempts at making AOSP releases are pieced together hacks that never work right while Qualcomm always backs development), I need to have root. I have too many apps that need to be backed up and restored with their data intact and while it would be nice to be able to leave my wallet at home, I don't mind giving up Samsung Pay to do that.

 

BTW, in Dubai we have the Exynos CPUs for these S7 phones and it's great. Talking about stock experience though not rooted

the battery life is phenomenal

 

The Exynos variant won't ever see anything but TouchWiz though unless Samsung reverses course which is unlikely while the Snapdragon variant will have custom ROMs all over the place including stock Android. Sure, you lose a lot of Samsung's gimmicky features but the memory usage... ugh. I love my Note 5 but it *DOES* still lag when using TouchWiz.

With that said, the Qualcomm chip is not running at full speed either... Those Kryo cores can hit 3GHz, not just the 2.15GHz Samsung has them clocked at. Obviously this will be hit or miss and depend on the chip quality but it should be interesting once developers really get into the 820 version.

 

I'll admit this scared me off from LG a bit. This is a production unit of the LG G5 purchased by YouTube tech reviewer Erica Griffin. The light bleed and build quality issues are incredible, and the G5 is a high-end device that competes directly with the Galaxy S7 (at least in terms of pricing), not a midranger built down to a price like the Nexus 5X:



Other reviewers have had similar issues; this isn't a total fluke.

 

Seriously, every LG phone since the LG Chocolate has had massive issues. I was one of the unfortunate souls that bought an LG G2x (the first dualcore phone and it also happened to use nVidia's Tegra 2) and they botched that device so bad that they abandoned it and I ended up having to pay full price for an HTC Sensation 4G with the Qualcomm 8260 dualcore to replace it. I have never heard of an LG phone that didn't have massive issues. In fact, the G2 overheated so badly that Brave Frontier actually advised people not to play the game while their phone was on the charger or it would risk resetting, the G3 was woefully underpowerful because of LG's insisting on a 1440p screen on a Snapdragon 801 processor that, lets be honest, wasn't that great with 1080p either. The G4 was underpowered again although this time it was Qualcomm's fault with the 810 heat debacle forcing them to use the hexacore 808 instead of the octacore 810 but there were software issues like crazy and many bricked their phones trying to achieve root and now the G5 has manufacturing issues abound. The only phone I've seen LG release that didn't have widespread issues (besides the same underpowered hexacore 808) is the V10 but both the S6 Edge and Note 5 obliterate it with the Exynos chip so it didn't really appeal to many. Don't get me started on the G Flex......

I seriously would love to have the S7 Edge but not without it being rootable and I've seen the drop tests... it doesn't do well... So I wait for the Note 6.

 

i think you should reconsider the drop tests, because you should invest into a tempered glass cover for the screen and spend a few more bucks on a decent case, because the phones are not meant to withstand heavy hits or so... the materials they use are too weak to withstand such forces, when impacted at higher speeds or from bigger heights. Especially the screen. And actually, Samsung has one of the best screens, that doesn't crack that easily, such s iPhones or previous versions of Galaxies...

 

I haven't used a case for 8 years now and none of those phones have any scratches on them. I take care of my phones and don't do stupid things like multitasking while using the phone, such as tying my shoes with the phone on my shoulders/ear or use the phone outside on pavement of any kind, (just in case I drop it)... you get the idea. Here are my phones from last 8 years, (minus the S5 that I traded for the Note 4) with no blemishes on them at all:

 

I think if you are a user, that takes care of it's portable devices according to how you described, you shouldn't worry about the drop test aspects or how long the phone will survive just by getting a general scratch on it The Galaxy S7 Edge are really durable phones from my experience, but to be honest, in my hands the phone felt cheap, because of the materials they use in casings... But I think we are getting a little bit off topic now from the main reason you posted this thread

 

Without root, it does not matter. That's a deal breaker for me. The edge screen is a gimmick that I can't stand as well. It makes it difficult to get a case that isn't cumbersome. The case on my Note 5 makes it hard enough to hit things on the edge of the screen without the S-Pen as it is.

I've never cracked the screen on a phone before (although somehow I cracked the screen on my Hero but the glass was perfect, manufacturing defect doesn't count) and I'm well aware of the durability vs iPhone but the edge screen still irks me either way.

 

Will the Note 6 differ from the S7 when it comes to ease of acquiring root access?

 

Nobody knows yet but T-Mobile doesn't traditionally lock down devices and they've taken a LOT of flack for Samsung locking down the S7 and S7 Edge. Considering T-Mobile has more growth than any of the other carriers right now, it would be worth Samsung's time to leave the T-Mobile version unlocked, especially because the Note ends up in the hands of power users.

 

Water-resistant...

 

Had a fairly large update this morning a few minutes ago at 3:40 AM.
Galaxy S7 Edge Nougat update: Verizon releases G935VVRS4APH1 build (6.0.1)

http://www.theandroidsoul.com/galaxy-s7-edge-update/

And Verizon's update page:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/samsung-galaxy-s7-edge-update/

 

You can watch 3D SBS video on Samsung Gear VR via Samsung Galaxy S7.