It's Ugly, but Awesome - Samsung Galaxy S7 Active Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,576 words · ~7 min read
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the Galaxy S6 active blew me away with its strong battery life great camera and
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rugged build quality and as my wife's daily driver has actually continued to
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impress me with better than expected software updates provided you perform
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them manually if you're not an AT&T user
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its successor the S7 active blew me away
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with its brick-like size and weight and unbelievably ugly gold front bezel but
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then again maybe there is more to this ugly duckling then meets the eye let's
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all hope
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so Corsair boasts unrivaled comfort and
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Universal compatibility on its void surround headset featuring a genuine
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Dolby 7.1 headphone USB adapter check
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out the link in the video description to learn more I don't want to bore you so
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let's get the specifications out of the way really fast here here the Galaxy S7
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active rocks a qualcom Snapdragon 820 CPU there is no exos version for some
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markets this time around and adreno 530 GPU and 4 gigs of RAM making it
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competitive with a nearly identical to
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plus or minus a gig of RAM here or there any other Flagship smartphone on the
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market on the back is a dbrand skin so
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you can't see the abhorent color scheme you're welcome along with the 12 megap
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rear camera that I know and love a two
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Flash and wireless charging under the hood on top is a noise cancelling
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microphone and a headphone jack in my preferred position on the right is a
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nice clicky lock button and a tray for a single SIM card and micro SD card this
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can be used to expand the 32 gigs of built-in storage on the left is a volume
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rocker that feels good but is regrettably right across from the lock
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button derp and the active key something
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I wish Samsung and other manufacturers for that matter would add a lot more of
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to their smartphones because this thing is great it acts as a shutter button
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when the camera app is open and there are three different actions bound to
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single double and long presses if you
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don't care about activity zone or you
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don't have Direct TV or whatever you can change them to open any app you'd like
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now I'd still love to see more flexibility here like being able to
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directly call a contact uh turn on the flashlight activate my mobile hotspot or
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or whatever else but it's something I found myself using a lot even the way it
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is now on the bottom is the main microphone and a micro USB charging port
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hopefully a new VR headset comes soon so Samsung can switch to type- C and a
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bottom mounted speaker that is decidedly status quo I'd like to see everyone
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taking HTC's approach with an upgraded earpiece speaker giving the phone not
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necessarily stereo but dual speaker sound next to the earpiece is the same 5
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megapixel selfie camera from the S7 so
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it's good if a little bit too wide making noses or other facial features
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appear oversized under it is the 5.1 in
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Gorilla Glass 4 covered 2560 x440 AMOLED
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screen that continues to impress me with its not overly saturated colors
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considering this is a Samsung OLED we're talking about and fantastic visibility
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in all conditions including direct sunlight beneath that yeah okay so these
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are Hardware buttons they're still here they're a bit of a love it or hate it
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thing personally I got used to them
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pretty fast and it was nice to not have to worry about pressing back with my
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palm while Reaching Across the keyboard or accidentally closing videos all the
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time in landscape mode but your mileage may vary all right so last time around
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the big draw to the active model was the
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ip68 Ingress Protection rating compared to the s6's complete lack of official
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water resistance that's why I loved it so much even though it lacked a
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fingerprint sensor something that has made it feel surprisingly obsolete in
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the last year as more and more third-party applications last pass is
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one that I use multiple times every day are making use of this feature
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fortunately the middle home button has one this time around making the active a
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full no compromises S7 experience
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which is good because the regular models picked up damn impressive water
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resistance this time around with RS7 beating out offerings from Sony and Kera
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in this sea water depth challenge which you can check out right here let's talk
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other tradeoffs you lose the sex appeal for sure the active is noticeably
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heavier and thicker with bigger bezels
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but in addition to water and dust proofness the active is rated for drop
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resistance though it should be noted that if you drop anything enough times
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it will eventually break and it features a whopping 4,000 milliamp non- removable
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battery which combined with Samsung's good power management in the latest
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TouchWiz resulted in me making it as close to two full days as I ever have
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with a smartphone since I started reviewing them about a 175% of a day
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unfreaking real it is AT&T exclusive So
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4G band support is a little more limited because it does need such broad
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compatibility but I didn't run into any issues with reception on my carrier that
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stupid message that was always in the tray with the S6 active when it first
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launched is gone and most of the AT&T
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stock apps can actually be fully disabled this time so they don't
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continue to run in the background TouchWiz continues to improve so I don't
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have a ton of comments there other than keep up the good work ladies and
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gentlemen and the camera is the same camera that continues to outperform
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pretty much everything else in terms of launch speed shutter speed image quality
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low light I I love the s7's
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camera so then is the active better than
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the regular S7 is it worth the price Delta well that's actually hard to say
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the battery life is amazing that was the
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only thing that kept the Droid Turbo ahead of the S6 active for me last time
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around and software support for the S6 active has been confidence inspiring
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even if you need to use ADB to upgrade it outside of America but there is one
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nagging issue one that I thought I was imagining when I couldn't reproduce it
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on camera and left it out of my S6 active review both the S7 active and its
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predecessor's touch screens lag occasionally the most obvious symptom of
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which is double presses especially fast ones resulting in a long press while
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typing frustratingly I was once again unable to reproduce it on camera due to
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the intermittent nature of the issue but especially side by side with the touch
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latency optimization of the HTC 10 it is
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noticeable other than that this phone is the absolute no compromises bomb and it
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gets a very strong recommendation especially if you're the kind of person
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who was going to buy an S7 and then spend a hundred bucks on a battery bank
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and a rugged case anyway speaking of
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accessories for your phone especially ones that save you from incidental dings
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and scratches dbrand skins head over to
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dbrand.com we've got a link in the video description and check out their
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highquality Precision Cut vinyl skins they've got them available for phones
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tablets uh game consoles game controllers and even laptop computers
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these days and the best thing about dbrand aside from the fact that they fit
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perfectly and are easy to apply and they're high quality and they stay on
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and all that stuff you'd expect from a vinyl skin but unfortunately don't
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usually get the best thing is the configurator with the configurator you
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can see all the different zones that you can change the colors of and you can
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swap them out in real time building the perfect device that is exactly your
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style and that perhaps no one else would even want so check it out again that's
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Linked In the video description dbrand.com they're great guys over there
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and they make great skins and they ship worldwide so thanks for watching guys if
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this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed
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maybe buy an S7 active over at Amazon we've got a link down there in the video
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description or some other phone ultimately it makes very little difference to me or even consider
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