Mar 13, 2016 @ 04:34 AM
Galaxy S7 Giving iPhone 6s Trouble On (At Least) Two Fronts
Brooke Crothers
Contributor
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (L) and iPhone 6s Plus. (Credit: Apple/Samsung)
A new Samsung or Apple AAPL +1.05% phone is a game of one-upmanship. So, it shouldn’t come as a great shock that Samsung’s just-released phone is besting the iPhone 6s in (at least) two key areas.
Among a host of tweaks and improvements, Samsung has come through with a better camera and display. So, how does the Galaxy S7 stack up against the iPhone 6s in these two areas?
Camera: Winner in low-light category. I don’t know about you but most of my photos are taken in low light, either indoors or in low-light outdoor settings. So, Samsung, wisely, is focusing on low-light improvements. Reviews confirm the Galaxy S7 has taken the lead — even Apple enthusiast site iMore says so. “The Galaxy S7 is the clear winner in our low-light shootout,” iMore says, attributing it to a wider aperture than the iPhone 6s and Samsung’s Exynos digital signal processor, among other things (albeit some of the write-up is devoted to defending the iPhone 6s’ camera vis-a-vis the Galaxy S7). Yahoo YHOO +3.02% Tech says pretty much the same thing about the S7′s low-light performance, saying the iPhone 6s’ low-light performance “isn’t even close.” Yahoo Tech goes a step further and says the S7′s shooter is able to capture more detail than iPhone 6s. And CNET says the “S7 trumps the iPhone 6S” because it produces more “usable” photos in low light.
Display: OLED is advancing faster than LCD: This really isn’t anything new in the Samsung-Apple rivalry but just affirms that the Galaxy S7 continues to lap the LCD-based iPhone here. Organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays allow Samsung to offer the Galaxy S7 Edge with a cool curved display. While the utility of the curves (beyond the cool factor) is still a bit tenuous, it’s the future that’s important. OLED gives Samsung the flexibility (no pun intended) to go beyond the flat-screen smartphones of today. Think: future phones with flexible and even foldable displays, as pointed out by Raymond Soneira, a display expert and CEO at DisplayMate Technologies. But getting back to the here and now, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge boast the best OLED displays yet from Samsung, according to DisplayMate. Moreover, OLED tech is advancing faster than LCD (and apparently Apple knows this). OLED displays are typically thinner, lighter, with a smaller bezel (for near-rimless designs), have a faster response time, better viewing angles, more vibrant colors, high color accuracy, and an always-on display mode.
But not winning across the board: For the record, I use the iPhone 6s Plus (and love it) so I’m not a Samsung Galaxy S7 booster. But facts are facts. Battery: And speaking of facts, Samsung is still struggling to overtake — or even match — the iPhone 6s on battery life and performance. With the S7 — and particularly the S7 Edge with its larger capacity — battery life has finally become acceptable but still doesn’t appear to beat the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Performance: Apple seems to have the upper hand here too. Anandtech is one of the best benchmarking review sites and its testing shows that it’s “hard to declare a clear winner” when comparing S7′s Qualcomm QCOM +0.38% CPU to Apple’s A9 silicon on the iPhone 6s. In fact, certain key benchmarks show the iPhone 6s still beating the Galaxy S7′s processor. (Though it should be noted that versions of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge outside of North America use Samsung’s own Exynos chip, which is faster than the Qualcomm processor, according to TechRadar.)
