The premium segment of the smartphone market is crowded by a lot of over-priced phones and those that have overly-powerful specs at bargain prices. Case in point – the Galaxy S7 Edge and the new OnePlus 3T. How do they compare though? We find out:
Display
The OnePlus 3T has a 5.5-inch 1080p display with Optic AMOLED technology. It’s a great screen and has one of the best colour-productive outputs on a phone. The Edge has the edge though, having a quad-HD curved-display on either side. Since it’s a Samsung AMOLED technology, it’s the best screen out there right now. Bright, colourful and popping. For those extra bucks, the display on the Edge seems like it’s quite worth the money. Clubbed with VR, the better picture would be on the higher res quad-HD display for sure.
Tech Specs
On the inside, the 3T’s got the latest from Snapdragon – the Snapdragon 821 quad-core processor with the Adreno 530. It’s the best processor out there today and it’s proven its mettle with the Pixel, so we should expect the same sense of reliability. It’s got 64/128GB of in-built storage, non-expandable and a monster 6GB of RAM.
The Edge is a little outdated, but still in the race, with the quad-core Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890 Octa-core chipset. The Exynos chipsets from Samsung have more power and better performance than their Snapdragon counterparts but aren’t as efficient, so we’ll have to hand this round over to the OnePlus 3T, since the Edge also offers only 4GB of RAM, although enough, isn’t just as big as the 3T’s. The Edge does have expandable storage going for it though, and it’s still a pretty powerful handset. The 3T is just pretty overpowered.
Camera
Both cameras are pretty decent, but the S7 probably has the edge on this one, having the industry approved and appreciated 12MP rear camera which is a real performer in low-light and medium lighting shots. The 3T’s camera has received an upgrade compared to its previous iteration, now having a 16MP rear camera as well as a front-facing 16MP camera as well. It’s not been put through its paces yet, but it should be on-par with the best from Samsung.
Software
The 3T and the Edge have very different software inside, with OnePlus’s Oxygen OS being more true to Android’s original skin and being filled with zero bloatware. It’s still stuck at Marshmallow, but OnePlus is telling users that Nougat is just around the corner.
The Edge is still on Marshmallow too, but it’s got a lot of good features too, like Multi-window, the Edge-specific functions that take advantage of the curved display. There is some bloatware in it, but the phone still manages to run smoothly despite. In fact, it’s got some good intuitive gesture input modes that may or may not be gimmicky, but they work quite well.
So as far as the software package is concerned, a more vanilla flavour is what the 3T offers. But the Edge packs in a lot of extras. That’ll be a choice that’s completely consumer-dependent.
Verdict
Both phones have made waves in their own right. The S7 Edge is still an amazing phone, although it was launched way back in February. It falls well in line with the OnePlus 3T which was launched just a couple of days ago. But in terms of future-proofing, the 3T, with its added RAM and processing power should ideally be the way to go. The Android in the 3T isn’t too heavy for the phone too, so smooth functioning on the device will be more possible in the long run.
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