Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

All rounder phone

A sight to behold, the design carefully refines the S6 edge, with slimmer bezels and subtle curves on the back. Grip is questionable and the screen sometimes registers your palm rather than your fingertips but one-off looks and the amazing feel in hand more than compensate for that. Water and dust protection will give you peace of mind in adverse environmental conditions. The AMOLED display looks pleasing in default mode, near-perfect color accuracy can be achieved with a flick of a switch. Sunlight legibility is great, and maximum brightness has been further improved compared to the S6 edge. The Always On feature is useful though it does inevitably take a toll on battery life. There's no wired video out or FM radio and the IR emitter is gone too, but the microSD slot is back, thankfully. Battery life is flagship-worthy at 98 hours between charges - a good 18 hours more than the Galaxy S7. The Always On display lowers this rating down to 67 hours, still an acceptable result. If you want to use the Edge feeds on the lockscreen, the endurance will go further down to 60 hours. The Galaxy S7 edge comes with little on top of the Google app suite - there are a few signature apps like S Planner and S Health and Samsung's custom multimedia software, but other than that, there's little in the way of bloatware. Microsoft's mobile app package is on board too. The Always-On lockscreen makes some of the exclusive edge features redundant. The edge shortcuts are useful at times but you can safely do without them. Standard-setting benchmark results, both the CPU and the GPU pack plenty of power and are chart-toppers, future-proofing is guaranteed. Loudspeaker scores "Good" on loudness, and its sound quality is among the better ones with deep sound. Clean audio output with external amp, only minor quality drop with headphones (though more than the Galaxy S7), above average volume. The all-new 12MP still camera is capable of near-instant focusing thanks to its dual-pixel technology. Images are detailed, dynamic range and colors are good, and while in terms of image quality, the camera is comparable to that of the S6, the entire package is a downright upgrade. The selfie camera is great with skin tones, but has a tendency of clipping the highlights. It's also about time Samsung upped the resolution of its flagship front snappers. 4K videos are packed with detail, however camcorder struggles to hold on to focus at 1080p/60fps.

Best smartphone with very good features