Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were eager to upgrade their phones to Android 7.0 Nougat, but they had a nasty surprise. The new update changed battery life for the worse, shortening it by 10 percent.
Both flagships come in two variants of internal configurations: Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 820 chipset + Quad-core (2×2.15 GHz Kryo & 2×1.6 GHz Kryo) CPU + Adreno 530 GPU + 4GB of RAM or Exynos 8890 chipset + octa-core (4×2.3 GHz Mongoose & 4×1.6 GHz Cortex-A53) CPU + Mali-T880 GPU and 3GB of RAM. The Galaxy S7 has a 5.1-inch Super ANOLED QHD screen and a 3000mAh battery, while the S7 Edge is much larger, featuring a 5.5-inch screen and a 3600mAh battery.
With Marshmallow, there were no particular problems with Samsung’s flagships, but after installing Android 7.0 Nougat, instead of getting an improved battery life, users started complaining that the new operating system has shortened battery life by up to 10 percent.
In order to convince themselves that the users had real reasons to be angry, the guys at Phone Arena have ran some tests that usually measure typical use on all devices, and they set the screens to a brightness of 200 nits. Then, both phones were updated to Android 7.0, kernel version 3.18.14.
The Galaxy S7 running on Nougat lasted 6 hours, with 37 minutes less than on Marshmallow, and this is a 9.4% difference in terms of performance. As for the Galaxy S7 Edge, on Nougat it scored 6 hours and 35 minutes, while on Marshmallow, it scored 7 hours and 10 minutes, and this is an 8.1% difference.
Although Nougat has been praised for its visual overhaul, the faster and smoother multitasking functionalities and improved camera software, it seems that there is a downside. Unfortunately, a better performance comes with a price: reduced battery life.
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