Despite the recent news that Samsung is recalling their Galaxy Note 7, I had to get my review of the phone out. A frustrating situation for those of us who put a lot of time and effort into review videos, but it happens. Regardless, I still think the Note 7 is a fantastic device. Samsung will ship replacements, and the phone will continue being awesome, just without battery issues.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a beautiful phone. It is and will be the best phone of 2016. I don’t care what Apple releases as the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the Note will be better. The screen with it’s smaller “edges” grabs my eye every time the screen comes on. Samsung does that with a 1440 x 2560 pixels (~518 ppi pixel density) display. Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protects the always-on display that runs Samsungs Touch-wiz UI.
The camera is top notch, probably the best that will be released for quite a while. The 12 MP, f/1.7 camera with 26mm lens packs features photographers want such as phase detection autofocus, OIS, LED flash.
The Note 7 is water and dust resistant like all of Samsungs flagship phones of 2016. In my review, I tested it in water and it seemed to perform better at transitioning from the dry to the wet than the S7 variations.
Samsung somehow manages to make their phone slimmer while still keeping the features we love such as wireless charging and an even faster fingerprint scanner.
I could go on for quite some time about this phone but one of the issues it falls prey to is its performance. I am unlike most smartphone users. I end up installing around 200 apps on my phones and use them a lot throughout the day. It doesn’t take long for a phone to start lagging on me. This is common with Android phones and my experiences with them. The Galaxy Note 7 is a feature packed phone with a strong UI that requires resources. The 32GB storage combined with the requirements I put on a phone make it lag a bit from time to time. The memory often gets used up, and there isn’t much storage left over to allow for swap.
With that said, it is still one of the best phones on the market and will be. Samsung is a technology company that continues to push the envelope. Features like the retinal scanner are a bit gimmicky, but so is a dual camera (my opinion).
What are your thoughts on the Galaxy Note 7? Aside from the issue with the battery, it’s a pretty fantastic phone. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
