With the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge set to launch Friday, comparison tests are starting to trickle in. Recently, tech enthusiast Jerome Ortega took the Galaxy S7 Edge for a test run against competitor devices, including the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition, the Nexus 6P and the iPhone 6s Plus. Though the Galaxy S7 Edge includes some of the latest high-end specifications, including a Quad HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip and 4GB of RAM, the handset fell short during speed and performance tests.
All four handsets were factory reset and tested without SIM cards. The devices were put through their paces; Ortega timed how long it took to open and close various third party applications, including Instagram, Temple Run, YouTube and Chase mobile banking.
The iPhone 6s Plus came in first, and was able to complete two rounds of opening and closing all of the tested applications in 1 minute, 42 seconds. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge came in second, and was able to complete the task in 2 minutes flat. The Nexus 6P came in third, completing the task in 2 minutes, 2 seconds, while the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition finished in 2 minutes, 16 seconds.
While the test results were not too shabby for the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Ortega pointed out that the handset is intended to have at least twice the computing power of the iPhone 6s Plus. The S7 Edge includes 4GB of RAM, while the iPhone 6s Plus features 2GB of RAM.
There are many other factors to take into consideration when evaluating how a device performs. Even with equal testing conditions, Android devices like the Galaxy S7 Edge have heavy custom skins on top of the pure Android operating system, with Samsung’s TouchWiz being one of the more cumbersome interfaces. Recent reports just indicated that Samsung’s stock system and application takes up 8GB of RAM on the 32GB handset. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS system usually takes up less space from the overall internal storage, around 6GB.
This likely won’t stop iOS fans from reveling in this victory, but the Galaxy S7 still proved to be a top performer. With reports indicating the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are selling well during their preorder period, many users are still looking forward to the next big thing from Samsung.
