The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
by Joshua Ho on August 16, 2016 9:00 AM ESTVideo Performance
For this portion of the review we can take a look at video performance, which provides an extra test of encode block performance in addition to ISP, sensor, and optic performance. In the interest of not wasting time on retreading topics that are basically unchanged relative to the Galaxy S7, I would redirect readers interested in an in-depth exploration of this subject and comparisons to other devices to the Galaxy S7 Part 2 review as this part of the review will be almost entirely focused on just comparing the Note7 to the Galaxy S7 to see what’s changed.
| Samsung Galaxy Note7 Video Encode Settings | ||||
| Video | Audio | |||
| 1080p30 | 17 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 256 Kbps, 48 KHz AAC | ||
| 1080p60 | 28 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 256 Kbps, 48 KHz AAC | ||
| 4K30 | 48 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 256 Kbps, 48 KHz AAC | ||
| 720p240 | 76 Mbps H.264 Baseline | 256 Kbps, 48 KHz AAC | ||
Starting with encode settings, we can see that the Note7 retains the same exact encode settings as the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, which probably isn’t a surprise given that we’re probably seeing the limits of what the Snapdragon 820’s encode blocks can handle in cases like slow motion video, although 1080p30 is likely not encode-limited at this point.
Galaxy Note7
Galaxy S7
In 1080p30 video the Galaxy Note7 and Galaxy S7 look basically identical save for some slight differences in color rendition. The Note7 seems to be slightly more accurate here as the sky is closer to the color of blue that it should be but detail and most other colors look fairly comparable and both still have some jerky OIS reset behavior.
Galaxy Note7
Galaxy S7
In slow motion video the Galaxy Note7 again seems to have slightly improved color rendition but detail and pretty much everything else is identical. I don’t think this is a reason to go out and buy the Note7, but hopefully these improvements to color rendition come to future OTAs for the Galaxy S7.
Overall I don’t think video results appreciably change the Galaxy Note7’s results here. The camera is great from a speed perspective and it’s good for video but in a lot of cases HTC really does have them beat with the camera on the HTC 10. I think the major win for the Note7 continues to be speed and consistency as the one major weakness of the HTC 10’s camera relative to the Note7 is somewhat unreliable contrast AF in low light, although in better conditions PDAF has no issues achieving perfect focus.
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Meteor2 - Saturday, August 20, 2016 - link
Well apart from the removable battery, you're describing Nexus.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Dropbox has gotten to be rather bloated. To give you a rough idea of how bloated it is, the Dropbox process on my PC has consumed 11 seconds of CPU time on my machine today. I have not used my dropbox all day and it has synced nothing. It should have been completely idle with extremely minimual CPU usage today. But instead, it has consumed nearly 1/4 the CPU cycles that DWM.exe has consumed. And surely you know what a hog DWM can be.Cod3rror - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Dropbox is super bloated. But you should checkout OneDrive and how many background processes it runs on Android; ridiculous! That's why I uninstalled both and use the services through Solid Explorer.Vaga - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Please do a headphone out audio output test. Also, please review the ZTE Axon 7!prime2515103 - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
I agree, and also a speaker test. This was a huge problem with my note 3. I was shocked at how much better the speaker was on other phones of the same generation. The speakerphone is all but useless and listening to music or videos without headphones is annoying at best. Yet, there was no mention of this in any reviews (anywhere, not just Anandtech).Dennis Travis - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Excellent Review! Thanks so much.tipoo - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Those P9 and Mate 8 hot and cold runtime scores though. Is that from storage performance or the A72 cores in the Kirin?tipoo - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Looks like they're behind the note 7 in sequential and not much different in 4KB random storage performance. So the Kirin makes that much difference, or just Touchwiz bloat?JoshHo - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
It's a function of some optimizations that HiSilicon has done in their BSP.jospoortvliet - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
Any more details than that? It is quite curious that Samsung can't manage this...