ARE 4 YEAR OLD FLAGSHIP DEVICES STILL RELEVANT IN TODAY'S WORLD?

ARE 4-YEAR-OLD FLAGSHIP DEVICES STILL RELEVANT IN TODAY'S WORLD?

Today we have mobiles and tablets which are loaded with heavy specifications such as huge displays, amazing cameras huge batteries, and whatnot. So, can a 4-year-old flagship device would stand a chance against these? Let's find out!

For this test, I will be using the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge(2016).

Since this device is pretty old I had to factory reset it and I also applied a custom ROM(Black Diamond nfe rom). Also, I broke the S7 edge's screen really bad (sad reacts).

To test the devices I've divided the testing into 4 parts 'The Display', 'The Camera', 'Performance & Speed', and 'Battery Life'.

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge

Let's begin with some specifications and details about the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. It was released in March 2016. This phone came with a 5.50-inch super AMOLED WQHD(1440×2560) screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on both sides, a single 12 MP rare camera and 5 MP front camera, Exynos 8890 Octa-Core processor, 4 GB RAM 32 GB of internal storage and a 3600 mAh battery. Apart from these specifications there are a lot more but won't go in too many details. 

The Display

As mentioned earlier the galaxy S7 edge has an amazingly beautiful 5.50-inch super AMOLED WQHD display. If you watch a lot of shows or videos on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or even on YouTube you can watch them at 1440p(provided the videos are of that quality). I have watched a lot of shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in this device and even at 1080p the picture quality of those shows felt and looked much better than in any other phone the colors reproduced by the screen are just beautiful, vibrant and pleasing to the eyes. Also thanks to the custom ROM as with its help I managed to use my bear piece as the 2nd speaker and now I actually enjoy Dolby atoms on my device which makes the sound quality from average to amazing.

The Camera

The S7 edge has a 12 Mp rare and 5 MP front camera. The photos from the rare camera are awesome, the details are great with good sharpness, the contrast is good and the color reproduction is near to accurate. Even though the highlights are on a higher side the overall quality of the photos is really good. During night time due it's f1.7 aperture it takes some really good shots, the photos taken at night are equivalent to the night mode photos from some budget smartphones of today's time.

The front camera takes decent selfies with good details and a high level of highlights overall takes good selfies for a 5MP camera.

The rare camera can record videos at 1080p 30fps and 60fps and can go up to 4k 30fps which are actually very good and it can also shoot slow-motion videos and timelapse videos. One good thing about the slow-motion video and the timelapse is that we can control the speed of the videos. The front camera can record at 1080p 30fps and can go up to 2k 30fps. The mic captures the good quality of sound in video recordings. 

Overall the camera performs very well in taking photos and recording videos.

Here are a few sample shots from the camera(the last one's a bit edited)

Performance & Speed

The S7 edge came with a 4GB RAM and Exynos 8890 Octa-Core processor (14nm). The device can handle multitasking very efficiently and effectively I can watch a video and can also read an article side by side together with any problem and no heating issues. Ram management is also very good and efficient. Thanks to the custom ROM the whole UI feels very snappy and smooth. I have played a lot of heavy games on this device like PUBG, Asphalt 8 and 9 and Call of Duty with all these games I encountered a lot of frame drops at the highest settings I was able to get but with the settings at medium most of these games ran very smoothly but there still was a slight issue of overheating after almost 30-40 minutes of playing. Overall I would say the phone performs better than I expected.

Battery Life

The Galaxy S7 edge comes with a 3600mAh lithium-ion battery. And I have to say that the battery has detoried over the years which is very natural to happen. But even after all these years, I get about 12-15 hours of standby time and 5-6 hours of screen on time with heavy usage which is very good. It also supports 15W fast charging and quick charge 2.0 which charges the phone from 0 to 100% with 1hour 30minutes. Apart from that, it has two types of power-saving mode: regular power saving mode which gives you 1-2 hours of extra battery life and the maximum power saving mode which disables biometrics, reduces the performance of the device and brightness of the screen but in return, it gives around 1 and a half-day to 2 days of battery life when fully charged.

( I have used my phone in maximum power saving mode with 0% charge for 2 hours straight without any problems.)

The battery performs fairly good given that its actual capacity is reduced over the years.

So, should you buy S7 edge or any other 4-year-old flagship and ditch the budget smartphones? 

I would say if you already own an old flagship then use some custom ROMs as I did because the original software which came with the phone felt slower and it lagged a lot(flash custom ROMs at your own risk) and use it for 1 or 2 more years and save up some money to buy a better phone in the future. 

But if you don't have an old flagship then don't think of buying one now! Go for the budget phones as for almost the same price you'd be getting better features, latest software and latest technology included with the phone.

The good thing about flagship devices is that you can use them for 5 to 6 years (with some tweaking) without any problem whereas the budget phones usually last till 2 to 3 years. In fact, I am writing this article from Samsung Galaxy Tab S which is Samsung's 6-year-old flagship tablet and it works completely fine for me. Thank you so much for reading this. Peace!

"Whatever you do, do it well" – Walt Disney