 |
Customers also viewed these products
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Climate Pledge FriendlyProducts with trusted sustainability certification(s). Learn morePRODUCT CERTIFICATION (1)
Pre-owned Certified: Electronics products are inspected, cleaned and (if applicable) repaired to excellent functional standards. Buying Pre-owned extends a product's life, reducing e-waste and raw material extraction.
Reviews with images
Heavily used phone sold as New, didn't even bother to turn it on (seller Mobiles International LLC)
Received heavily used second hand, lot of scratches, chipped screen edge, unpacked, no screen protection. Photos attached.
Top reviews from other countries
Client d'Amazon
Facile et petit pour un usage normal.
Reviewed in France on January 13, 2019Cliente Amazon
Buon smartphone. Ottimo acquisto!
Reviewed in Italy on January 5, 2019
Chris Radford
Why I decided to remove Apple from the 'core' of my mobile life....
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2016
Chris Radford
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2016
As I sealed the envelope to Mobile Cash Mate, I thought about how the year-ago me wouldn't have ever dreamed of embracing an Android device, let alone a SAMSUNG one! So what happened to make me change my mind?
Over the nine years of my iPhone experience, the whole thing finally became too boring and predictable. Every September I would eagerly await the launch event and would actually believe that the new features would change mine and everyone else's lives. Somehow they convinced me to spend more and more money whilst tying me in to an ecosystem that gradually took a grip of so many important parts of my life. I definitely wanted out of that. Somehow, I agreed to paying £2.99 every month for cloud storage and email, which has ended up hosting all of my photographs, documents and email. NO!!
Opening the packaging for my Samsung Galaxy S7 was an Apple-esque experience. The same inner contents - my cellophane wrapped mobile, high speed wall charger and USB cable along with a plastic box with a pair of earphones inside. Straight away, I already have a load of cables within my home for charging this new device as Samsung, along with almost every other manufacturer apart from the Cupertino giant, use a standardised cable type. Maybe they make less money from replacement parts, but their customers will resent them less. You can buy a high quality, fast charging microUSB cable for less than £2 with free shipment from Amazon. Any Lightning cable not approved by apple will not work so you'll struggle to get a replacement Apple cable for less than £10. Finally within the S7 box is a SIM re
moval tool. Common to most smart phones, but a necessity nonetheless, and adding to the Apple-y feel!
The Samsung/Android hybrid operating system is familiar to me whilst being new. The TouchWiz launcher is slow at times, but offers a layout that Apple users will understand. I immediately loved the innovative widgets and straight away had a clock/weather display on my home page. On my iPhone I would have needed a jailbreak to do this. The fingerprint sensor is quick and accurate. It offers the same app-login features as its fruit based rival. Android have combined the notification centre with the control centre and a slide down from the top of the screen will reveal six control buttons along with quick controls for audio playback and all of the current notifications. A second pull down from the control buttons will load the complete bank of buttons and gives rapid access to most of the settings for the phone. A long press of the buttons sends you straight to that particular settings menu item.
Android Pay seems to work better than Apple Pay. Every transaction results in a notification and a click on the app lets you have a look at all of your recent transactions. Sadly there is no Android Pay functionality on the Samsung Gear S2 and I have definitely missed being able to buy things with my watch. I'm quite sure this is just around the corner.
In September last year, Tim Cook and the gang raved about '3D Touch' on the 6S and 6S Plus. I agree that this is a useful feature, but I don't feel like I miss it on my Android device. I loved the 'Live Photos' function, but this is also a little-known feature on Android phones with their 'Motion Photo' setting. An improvement to the fruity feature is that with my Sammy handset I can send my motion photos as a video file, meaning that anyone can enjoy them and not just Steve Jobs' disciples.
Nobody ever seems to mention the actual mobile telephone functions of a smartphone, but I can tell you that the S7 outperforms the 6S by a country mile. There is even a button for increasing the speaker-phone volume beyond the max if you need to, and the S7 supports internet calling which seems to activate without any user intervention (subject to network access to the feature), making crystal clear calls with no drop-outs.
As for the cloud, I have yet to pay a single penny for the hundreds of gigabytes of storage I am using on my S7. Microsoft offered me 100GB of One Drive storage in return for a share on Twitter and all of my photos are now stored on Google's servers free of charge. All of these services are compatible with my iPad and MacBook Pro so I can still access all my files and photos on every single device. As for music, I can drag and drop any audio file I like onto my phone's onboard storage or SD card and the music players just seem to recognise them all. Simples!
The S7's camera is without doubt the best snapper I've ever used. Even at 9.1MP in 16:9 mode, the pictures are incredibly vibrant and colours more realistic. The dual pixel technology increases low-light performance - something that iPhones don't do well - and the SD Card slot means that 4k video is a more realistic proposition as the handset can take up to 256GB of storage on top of it's standard 32GB.
As if all of that isn't enough, my new favourite moby also supports wireless charging. If you've never used this technology, it might seem like a white elephant, but once you've had it for a few weeks you will never want to go back. Can you imagine sitting in your favourite seat in the lounge at night, watching TV or chatting to your significant other. By 8pm most people's phones are very much in need of some juice but don't you just hate having to constantly unplug. With wireless charging, you pick your phone up to use it for a few minutes and then plonk it back down on its little pad.
So how will I feel next month when the latest offerings from California go public? I will probably feel a little bit sad. Then I will check my bank balance and glance at the list of reasons why I love my S7 more than any iPhone I’ve ever earned, and all will be well with the world again.
Images in this review
