Samsung Galaxy S7 Review: Is it worth it?

The Galaxy S7 was Samsung’s flagship in 2016. To this day, the 5.1-inch smartphone remains very popular and is also occasionally available in stores and of course on the second-hand market. But what about the hardware and software? Is the S7 mobile phone still worth buying in 2024? We tell you in this article.

Hardware: a little dated

The Samsung Galaxy S7 has an Exynos 8890 Octacore processor and 4 GB of RAM. This still does reasonably well in performance benchmarks in 2020. In the Geekbench 4 rankings, for example, it is roughly on par with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 and 636 SoCs, which power many mid-range smartphones as of 2019. It also leaves behind the in-house mid-range Exynos 7420 SoC, which is used in the Galaxy A8 (2018).

In terms of memory, the S7 mobile phone is available with 32 GB or 64 GB. Today that is rather the minimum. More are available on demand via a microSD slot. The screen resolution is 1,440 x 2,560 pixels the same level as the successors Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S9. However, the S7 lacks support for HDR10 in comparison.

With the camera, the step from the Galaxy S7 to the S8 was not great. Only the Galaxy S9, Galaxy S10, and most recently the Galaxy S20 made significant gains here.

Compared to the cameras of current entry-level smartphones, the level is still okay, but the optics can no longer keep up with today’s best smartphones, especially the selfie camera. Slight improvements can be made with some tweaks via the Google Camera port for the S7 mobile phone.

In terms of design, the year 2016 cannot be denied: the comparatively wide border around the display and the home button on the front no longer look modern, like most 2018 smartphones. However, the aluminum and glass casing is of high quality and waterproof to IP68. The Galaxy S7 doesn’t have a USB-C port yet, but it does have a headphone jack.

Be careful with used smartphones: The Galaxy S7 has a built-in battery, the operating time of which naturally weakens over the years.

Android updates and security: the weak point

The Samsung Galaxy S7 shipped with Android 6.0 Marshmallow (2015 version) and its TouchWiz interface at the start of sales. The smartphone received the update to Android 8.0 Oreo (2017 version) in mid-2018. That was the end: Samsung no longer planned an update to Android 9.0 Pie (2018 version). So if you want to stay up to date here, you should look elsewhere.

Samsung continued to provide the Galaxy S7 with quarterly security updates until early 2020. In the meantime, however, the updated supply has completely expired. There is only one ray of hope for fans: with Lineage OS 16 and 17, there are already unofficial ROMs for the Galaxy S7 that are based on Android 9 and Android 10.

Price evolution: from 700 to 300 dollars

The price of the Galaxy S7 at launch was 700 dollars for the 32 GB version. A lot has happened since then. In November and December 2018, according to the price comparison, the price stabilized around 260 dollars. However, at the moment, the Galaxy S7 series is barely available in stores as new. The remaining stock is often available at unrealistic prices. The best price at well-known retailers is currently overpriced at around 370 dollars and at market retailers around 250 dollars. Prices also vary depending on the color variant.

After all, the Samsung Galaxy S7 2016 was rated “very good” and even today the smartphone remains a pretty decent daily companion. The weak points compared to the latest smartphones in the same price range are the weaker hardware, the already outdated Android system, and the outdated design.

For those who can live with it, S7 mobile phone may still be a good used buy today.