Despite the name, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is the company's 6th generation Note Android smartphone-- apparently they wanted to align the Note and Galaxy S line numbers. As a reviewer, covering the 5th, 6th or 7th generation of a product can be challenging: what can really excite you and me after so many iterations? Last year's Note 5 was a fine phone, and it brought the Note's design in line with the new look for the Galaxy S6 (glass and metal throughout). But it lost the microSD card slot from the Note 4, and some felt it was just a pretty face.
The Note 7 could have been iterative and frankly a little dull, but Samsung's managed to tweak all the right things, and it feels like a very new, and genuinely wonderful Android smartphone. It aims to be the (literally big) flagship of 2016, and it succeeds. It's more than just a Galaxy S7 edge with a pen, it's tweaked and tuned in important ways. It's the culmination of years of Samsung feature experiments, design refinement and software finesse. Most of the silly "throw it on the wall and see if it sticks" features are gone, and those that remain are genuinely excellent additions to Android. They also make the Note more than just a bigger Galaxy S7: features like S Pen, multi-window multitasking and floating window multitasking make the Note 7 truly a tablet that can fit in your pocket.
Specs at a Glance
The Samsung Galaxy Note has a 5.7" AMOLED 2560 x 1440 display with HDR video support (this is the first HDR phone). The S Pen is here, now with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and it has the same 5MP front camera and class-leading 12MP rear camera as the Galaxy S7 family. It runs Android 6 on the top dog Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core CPU with Adreno 530 graphics, 64 gigs of internal storage and 4 gigs of RAM. There's a microSD card slot for storage expansion up to 256 gigs. NFC, WiFi with WiFi Calling, VoLTE and GPS are here as is the very good fingerprint scanner we've seen on other recent Galaxy high end models. There's a new iris scanner that you can use to unlock the phone, but that requires a screen swipe first, making it less efficient than the fingerprint scanner. Why the required screen swipe to activate the iris scanner? So the phone doesn't unlock every time you glance at the Always on Display, a sleep screen that shows time, date, battery percentage and notifications.
The Note 7 supports both Samsung Pay and Android Pay and it's IP68 water resistant to avoid damage from rain, splashes, water (err, ideally not beer or a sticky Slurpee) spills and temporary immersion in up to 4.5 feet of water. Given how readily the pretty glass back picks up fingerprints, I've taken to giving it a quick rinse every few days, and it's survived fine. This is the first Samsung phone with a USB-C connector, and there's a new $99 Samsung Gear VR virtual reality goggles model with a USB-C port for those who enjoy phone-based VR.
Android and TouchWiz
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with a much improved Samsung TouchWiz overlay that mates nicely with Google's material design. Gone is the cartoony look and overbearing aesthetic makeover. Gone is the four page settings applet, replaced with something simpler that's more in line with the Android standard. App icon treatment is tasteful and the themes are attractive. The good stuff is still here: multi-window multitasking, the Air View pen features, and a well-populated, editable quick settings drop down. Customizations are thoughtful and useful: the WiFi settings drop-down lists available access points so you don't have to long press and go to settings, the Always on Display option means you don't need to move or wake up the phone to see important info. Over the years I'd never been a fan of TouchWiz, but this is the first time I genuinely like it. Sure, it adds quite a few features and programs on top of stock Android, so it's more demanding than the software the Nexus 6P and HTC 10 run, but processing power is more than sufficient to carry the load and I'd argue most of the additions are worth it.
Design and Ergonomics
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a phablet that doesn't feel awkward or bulky in hand. My Nexus 6P, much as I like it, is a gawky and not terribly ergonomic baby tablet. LG's big screen V10 is similarly not the most hand and pocket friendly. Even the iPhone 6s Plus feels awkwardly wide and large compared to the Note 7. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 feels like a phone rather than a small tablet, which is impressive given the big 5.7" AMOLED QHD display. Samsung has revised the side curves so they're symmetrical front and back. Sure that looks great, but it also makes the phone easier to hold and pick up. It's smaller than the Nexus 6P and iPhone 6s Plus (even though the iPhone has a smaller 5.5" display), and is just a little tiny bit larger than the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. The difficultly in phablets lies in their palm-stretching width, but somehow Samsung manages keep the Note 7 relatively slim. It's the most hand-friendly and comfortable Galaxy Note yet. In fact, it's the most comfortable phablet yet.
The display's sides are curved, but a bit less so than the Galaxy S7 edge, and that's a good thing. The curves look nice and set it apart as a high end Samsung phone, but they don't wrap so far around the side to incite accidental screen presses. I like the S7 edge but every time I use it for a few weeks, I'm driven mad by my palm and wrapped fingers accidentally activating the display. I've had no issues with that on the Note 7, and the screen sensitivity that's a little too high on the Galaxy S7 family feels toned down here and just right. It's still more sensitive than an iPhone or most competitors' phones, but it's not overdone. For those who used older Samsung phones with high screen touch sensitivity mode for gloves... sorry it's no longer an available option in settings.
Both back and front are clad in Gorilla Glass 5 and the sides are metal. The Note 7 is available in silver, black, gold (overseas) and the new coral blue. The metal side color is pale gold on the blue Note, black on the black Note, gold on the gold Note and silver on the silver Note.
Display
Samsung's Super AMOLED displays are vibrant, have near infinite contrast with deep blacks and extreme high brightness for outdoor use when auto-brightness is enabled. The display is visible outdoors and when wearing polarized sunglasses. Each iteration of display panel improves, and this is the most color accurate display yet, with more natural (less over-saturated) colors, impressive sharpness and a vivid look. You can select from a variety of color profiles, but we found that the default adaptive mode worked well. The phone has very wide color gamut that far exceeds sRGB, and it supports HDR video streaming from Amazon and we expect Netflix will follow.
The display resolution is the same as the last generation model at 2560 x 1440, which results in razor-sharp text and excellent definition for photos and video. There's a nighttime reduced blue light mode that's supposed to help us sleep better (too much blue light from LCDs before bed is said to result in less restful sleep).
Battery Life
The Note 7 has a 3,500 mAh battery and it supports quick charging via the included USB-C charger and wireless fast charging (if you own Samsung's fast wireless charger, other chargers may top up the battery at a slower rate). That's 500 mAh more battery capacity than the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, but 100 mAh less than the Galaxy S7 edge. It's noticeably quicker to charge via Samsung's fast wireless charger than the Galaxy S7 models. Much as I like the convenience of wireless charging, I didn't use it all that often with my Galaxy S7 edge because wired charging was so much faster, but with the Galaxy Note 7 it's fast enough to be worthwhile for a quick top-up.
In our tests the phone lasted an entire day of moderate use, from 8am to 11pm. Our real life use case includes web, streaming 45 minutes of YouTube video, email, social networking, calls and a short 30 minute trip with GPS navigation.
Conclusion
It's rare that I review a phone that ticks all the boxes. We're not all the same, and you may prefer a smaller phone or a less expensive phone--goodness knows this is pricey pocket computer! But for my money, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 does everything I expect, and it does it very well. The display is simply stunning, the ergonomics are blissful, it's attractive and classy looking, and the camera is tops. Battery life is good, performance is fluid and the iris scanner actually works (and I wear eyeglasses). The TouchWiz software experience is finally a plus in terms of aesthetics and usefulness, though it still places a burden on the system.
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