Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 Active is a toughened-up version of the flagship Galaxy S7 that won’t fail if dropped on the ground or in water.
The Android smartphone has a 5.1-inch screen with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, 32GB of storage. It sports a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera a 5-megapixel front camera. It also has a fingerprint reader, support for Samsung y. In other words, it’s got the same specs features as the Galaxy S7.
The smartphone will be available exclusively through AT&T on ne 10. You can shell out $794.99 for the hset, or buy it via AT&T Next, which cuts the price of phones down into monthly installments. AT&T Next also provides options to upgrade the hset at certain intervals.
I subjected the phone to rigorous torture tests. It withstood a six–a-half foot (two-meter) drop to a concrete floor, there wasn’t a scratch on the screen. It survived unscathed after I dropped it into a vertical, glass-encased, five-foot obstacle course that Samsung set up for demo purposes, featuring steel bars that the phone smashed into on the way down. And it was still working after it was immersed in a small bucket of water for a few minutes.
The Galaxy S7 Active has a Gorilla Glass 4 screen, much like the Galaxy S7, but with a polycarbonate layer that gives it extra protection. The hset can remain immersed in up to five feet of water for 30 minutes, according to Samsung.
The hset could be useful for clumsy folks like me with a penchant for dropping smartphones. I own a Moto G smartphone for that very reason; it doesn’t break easily when dropped or bent.
The S7 Active isn’t as sleek as the S7. It is 9.9-millimeters thick, slightly longer on the top bottom, all of which adds to the durability of the hset. It’s as if Samsung integrated a case directly onto the smartphone.
The phone also has protective bumpers on the curvy corner edges. A Samsung spokesperson surmised the layers are made of some kind of metal, though they felt rubbery on touch.
If you were wondering—the phone didn’t yield when I tried to bend it. No ione-style “d-gate” controversy here.
At 185 grams, the smartphone is heavier than the Galaxy S7, which weighs 152 grams.
The smartphone has three function buttons under the screen; that’s different from the flagship S7, which has a hard button in the center soft buttons on the corners.
The S7 Active has the look feel of its predecessor, the Galaxy S6 Active, but the stronger screen protection, added storage faster processor make it superior overall.
The smartphone runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip, a 64-bit chip with an integrated E modem. It has 4GB of RAM, an SD card slot allows for extra storage up to 200GB.
Another cool feature is the S7 Active’s fatter, 4,000 milliamp hour battery, which is bigger than the 3,000 mAh battery in the Galaxy S7. That gives the hset longer talk idle time, but also adds to the thickness of the device.
The S7 Active also can be used with the Gear VR headset to roam virtual reality worlds. I was also told it will work with the Gear 360 camera to shoot stereoscopic video.
Variants of the Galaxy S7 Active could be available at a later date in other countries, though it’s not certain when, a Samsung spokesman said.
