The Samsung Galaxy S7 promises to be one of, if not the best smartphone of 2016 just like it’s predecessor. As you would expect carriers here in Australia will all be carrying this phone and have had it in testing for quite a while. There is nothing worse than buying a new phone for a lot of money and have it not work on your network of choice (*cough* Nexus 6P) and as such the testing you would imagine would be quite rigorous for what will most likely be the best selling Android phone of 2016.
Telstra today have released on their blog the testing process they put the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge through and it is indeed rigorous and seemingly arduous. The testing included:
- 3,360 unique types of tests for each phone
- 1,068 person hours testing with a team of testers working in parallel
- 68 hours of drive testing each phone testing voice and data services on the network in urban and regional areas
- 4500 test voice calls
- Transferred 530 GB of data on the road 1.1 TB of data in our labs
In the past Telstra have been criticised for their often over-rigorous testing of software updates and phones, delaying releases. Obviously in this case Telstra have had the phone for quite a while to have been able to perform all these test on it and have it ready for the March 11 release to the public. According to the Telstra blog these tests are performed on all phones released on their network. One thing they are promising is a perfectly functioning Galaxy S7 on the Telstra network come March 11.
Are you interested in the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge from Telstra? If so the S7 and the S7 Edge are available for pre-order now from Telstra (and other carriers) with a free Gear VR unit to all pre-orders.
Testing, meaning they are ensuring their carrier bloat is unremovable.
Well, at least they’re doing their job ensuring that they know as much about the phones reception characteristics as they can, which is good for people in poor signal areas like myself.
In that second picture, you can see a guy installing Telstra malware on a brand new S7. He’s up to the part where he copies the file ShittyTelstraBootAnimation.avi.
Hopefully it doesnt end with bloatware and broken drivers.
I’ve ordered mine direct from Samsung *touch wood*
This is absolute BS. The phone reception for my S6 was absolutely terrible, and it took Telstra about 9 months to actually improve it.
My s6 still has terrible 4g reception on Telstra.I rarely ever get more than 2 bars unless I’m in the cbd. Lots of the other time I’ll have no bars. The 3g reception is good, but it is very reluctant to drop back from 4g
For the most part, all of these tests are bullshit IMO and only jack up the prices of Telstra’s contracts and phone prices in general.
I’ve used nothing but Nexus devices (as well as a Sony Xperia and Samsung Galaxy Note 3) for years now – running custom ROMs and kernels and I’ve never struck any issues.