Bad news: 10% worse battery life on Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge after Android 7.0 Nougat update

The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge have traditionally delivered a very good battery life, easily lasting through a full day even when you use your phone a lot. The S7 Edge with its massive 3,600 mAh battery in particular delivered excellent battery life.

So has battery life changed with Android 7.0 Nougat?

We put all phones on equal grounds in our testing and we double-checked the results

We tested both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, expecting to see them perform even better with Google's latest update and improvements. Sadly, we saw the opposite: battery life on both phones has actually worsened by up to some 10%. We have run the tests carefully and double-checked for mistakes, but the results were consistent. Rather than getting improved battery life, the latest and most important update for S7 series actually leads to worse battery life.

Here is our battery testing method: we set all phone screens to a brightness level of 200 nits, a level comfortable for indoor use. Then we run the same test that measures typical smartphone use on all phones.

We have had the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in our office for nearly a year now, so we had to first check whether the battery life of the phones has not declined with age. We re-ran all battery tests and found a very insubstantial decline due to the battery age and we have accounted for it in this test.

With all this verified, we happily hit the start button in the software update section and after a while, both phones were running the latest version: Android 7.0, kernel version 3.18.14.