Samsung started the Android Nougat roll-out for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge last week, but only members of the Galaxy Beta Program could get it right away. That changes today, as Samsung is finally making the much-awaited update available to more users, starting in China and UK.
After installing the hefty Android Nougat update on my Galaxy S7 edge, it became immediately clear that Samsung has put in a lot of effort to deliver a much more user-friendly experience. Its skin is much improved over what we had before on Android Marshmallow, packing lots of nice changes, both visual and under the hood. It is not perfect, but there is lots more to like now.
Samsung is currently rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat in Europe, which is not the latest version (that would be 7.1). The update is rather big, like I suspected, coming in at just under 1.3GB. Beta testers got a much smaller package, in comparison, at around 215MB.
Visually, the user interface has changed quite a bit. There is a lighter theme, which should help daylight visibility, and different icons. By default, icons get a white frame, which makes many of them look unoptimized. I’ve quickly switched back to the old style, which I think looks better.
The app drawer is also different. For one thing, apps are now sorted automatically by name. Before, you had to sort them manually (alphabetically, that is) after installing a new app, otherwise it would show up on the last screen despite its name starting with an « A » for instance.
A big improvement, at least from my point of view, is the Always On Display. At first, it may not seem like anything has changed, but Samsung has introduced notification support for more (all) apps, so you can now see a small icon and counter on the screen for apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and others (like your favorite weather app). This makes a huge difference: basically, Always On Display is no longer a gimmick.
Speaking of the display, it is worth pointing out that Samsung opted for a different resolution on the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge with Android Nougat. The default is now 1080p (1,080 by 2,560), instead of WQHD (1,440 by 2,560) as before. This should improve performance and battery life a bit, at the expense of visual clarity.
