Design
The design of the Galaxy S7 looks pretty much like that of the Galaxy S6 – or so you'd think when you first lay eyes on it. The phone, from the front, does have a very similar look, with the metal edges and rounded corners.
But the rear of the phone has been rounded away (think the S6 Edge's front used on the back) in the same manner as on the Galaxy Note 5, and it feels completely different.
On top of that, Samsung's brought back the IP68 rating (meaning you can dunk it in 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes) that we last saw on the Galaxy S5 – but this time, with the more premium design of glass and metal.
It's still a touch chunkier than other phones on the market, but it feels good in the hand, and the mix of glass and metal makes it feel like a phone worth spending a decent amount of cash on.
Screen
Samsung stuck with the same 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display on the Galaxy S7 as on the S6. It's usually a bad thing when a brand doesn't add anything to the mix for its phone from one year to the next (we're talking to you, Apple…) but in this case, last year's screen was so nifty that it couldn't have been improved on much this year.
Super AMOLED tech means you're already getting great color reproduction and brilliant differences between the light and dark elements of the screen – and the results always seem to impress friends.
The QHD resolution is pin-sharp too – at 1,440 x 2,560 pixels it's closing in on a resolution that's so sharp the eye can't ever see the pixels.
It makes pictures and web pages, in particular, look smooth and clear, and as OLED technology is self-emitting, the display sits closer to the glass too. Side by side the two do actually look a little different, with the Galaxy S7 showing up as a little brighter - Samsung's clearly optimized the tech while not changing the resolution.