User Interface.

Besides the extra Activity button and the Activity Zone app, the software experience is otherwise the same as the Galaxy S7. Samsung's popular and feature-rich TouchWiz UI skin on top of Android 6.0.1 is here as well with a few minor differences such as the paginated settings app and pre-installed apps, which can be found a couple of pages ahead.

The Galaxy S7 active separates itself from the other S7 models with an extra Activity button found right over the volume rocker. A single press of the button will take you to the Activity Zone app, a dashboard of useful information and tools for hiking enthusiasts.

There are tiles for weather, the step count from S Health, a compass, stopwatch, flashlight, and barometer/altimeter for measuring atmospheric pressure and altitude. Spotting sudden changes in atmospheric pressure can help predict weather changes when hiking (the more you know). These tiles can be dragged around in any order you please.

You can change the app that opens with the Activity button to anyone of your choosing. Set it to Ingress to hack portals nearby, or set it to Snapchat if you're a Snap addict. You can also set an app to open with a long press of the same button. The default app is set to the DirecTV remote app. If you set the key to open the Camera app, this button becomes a shutter key.

The lock screen typically holds a clock and date with two shortcuts in the bottom corners for Camera and Dialer. You're likely going to be launching the camera with a double-press on the home button if you need the absolute quickest access, so that makes one of the shortcuts redundant. Good thing then that each of them can be changed to any app you have installed.

Fingerprint unlock is a must-have feature and Samsung has been sticking with the press-and-hold variety since the S6. Or wake-and-tap, should you decide to wake up the phone with the power button. Either way, you first need to wake it up because the sensor isn't always on, which wastes precious milliseconds.

Overall, it works quite well, and if for some reason it can't recognize a finger in 3 tries, it lets you input the backup password. Ignore it and unsuccessfully try with a finger twice more and you'd be locked out of your device for 30 seconds giving you time to come up with a different tactic.

The screen features the same Always-On function as the other S7 models. Besides the time and date, the screen can be set to show a subtle wallpaper to make things a little fancier. You can download additional always-on themes from the store.

The home screen is identical to the TouchWiz home of other Samsung phones. However, Samsung has chosen a four-in-a-row default setup, with large, easy to tap icons. The dock can fit five, and so can the homescreen - grid size can be 4x4, 4x5, or 5x5.

The user interface has theming support. We only had the default theme pre-installed, but the Theme store has a vast selection available to download.

Synthetic benchmarks.

Unlike the global version (using Samsung's own Exynos silicon), the Galaxy S7 active is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU (as are all North American variants) paired with 4GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 820 features two dual-core Kryo chips. The first is a dual-core chip which maxes out at 2.15 GHz and the second dual-core chip maxes out at 1.6 GHz.

The Snapdragon 820 is Qualcomm's first departure from 8 cores down to quad-core territory, don't be fooled by that number though, a single Kryo core is a beast and what separates it from previous Snapdragon chips is its new architecture which combines improved efficiency with overall better performance.

A generous 4GB of RAM and the Adreno 530 GPU joins the Snapdragon 820 to give the S7 active a great deal of performance power under all that rugged exterior.

Let's see how the S7 active performed against other top competitors. Since the S7 active is only available in the US, we're going with mostly high-profile flagships available in the US.

For starters, the Galaxy S7 active's single core performance fits right in among the other Snapdragon 820 devices on the market. Still, the iPhone 6S' A9 chip dominates this chart in single core calculations.

To see the complete test of the cores' click here.

Camera.

If you've been familiar with Samsung's camera interface from the last year or so, you won't find many surprises in the Galaxy S7 active. It also sports the same 12MP F/1.7 camera as the Galaxy S7. To be even more specific, our unit has the SONY IMX260 camera sensor and not the Samsung-made ISOCELL S5K2L1.

While there are some minor differences between the two sensors, they both perform equally well. Both have relatively large 1.4-micron pixels, and each pixel is in a dual-pixel setup meaning a phase detection subpixel joins it. As a result, the phone focuses and re-focuses instantly regardless whether you're shooting video or capturing photos - it's perhaps the fastest focusing cameraphone on the market right now.

The Galaxy S7 excels at panoramas too. When holding the phone in portrait the images can be as tall as 4,032 pixels in vertical resolution minus whatever cropping it needs to do to compensate for your tilting and moving the camera vertically.

The Galaxy S7 active does well with panoramas as well. Even so, it's able to blend different exposures well in cases where you'd like to capture a scene that might include the sun.

The Galaxy S7 active takes everything great about the Galaxy S7 and puts it in a tougher and beefier body for outdoors enthusiasts or for the consumer that demands more from a smartphone than looks. Whether you are in construction, or you are a hiker, or you're just a clumsy person, the added grip and durability will surely give you that extra peace of mind.

The Galaxy S7 active is about never having to worry about putting your phone in a case. Never having to worry about your screen shattering from sliding off a table. And there's the bigger battery as well.

The Galaxy S7 active is a worthy successor to the Galaxy S6 active. You get all the benefits of the newer hardware that the vanilla S7 introduced including the fingerprint scanner this time around.

That being said, Samsung is the only major phone maker out in the US market, selling through a major carrier with flagship level hardware AND military-spec build quality, easily making it the most accessible rugged device in the US by the average consumer. That leaves customers who really want this phone only one option - you need to buy the phone through AT&T.

Still, if you really wanted to, you could probably find a way to purchase the phone outright and use it on your own GSM network, though we don't recommend it. Even so, it will probably burn a hole in your wallet for the price that it's currently going for. AT&T and Samsung are asking for $795 to buy this guy outright.

Key Test findings.

• Design is much like the Galaxy S6 active but more refined. The angled corners are gone and replaced with rounded corners. If they didn't know any better, someone might think you just had a really nice case.

• Water, dust, shock and shatter protection along with the military MIL-STD-810G certification should give you the peace of mind, whether you are a klutz or an extreme camper, regardless of your type of lifestyle. There's also a barometer and the Galaxy S7 active also features a programmable Active key which launches the Activity Zone app, exclusive to the Galaxy Active models.

• The AMOLED display is just as bright and beautiful as the S7's. As an added plus, the extra polycarbonate coating on the Gorilla Glass 4 ensures your screen won't break from drops of up to 5 feet high onto flat surfaces.

• The Always On feature is useful and the AMOLED screen takes perfect advantage of battery life by keeping only the white pixels lit. It does take a toll on battery life though. But that could be off-set a bit by scheduling when to active the Always On feature.

• FM Radio capabilities are included with the Galaxy S7 active, however there is no pre-installed app to tune the radio. You must rely on third-party apps like NextRadio and you will need a physical pair of headphones to be plugged into the headphone jack.

• Battery life is excellent at 96h overall thanks to the 4,000mAh integrated battery. Keeping Always on display knocks the score down to 70h, while still decent, this is a significant drop in score.

• TouchWiz is feature-rich as we're used to but this particular phone comes with a handful of obtrusive AT&T bloatware apps, which you cannot uninstall;

• The Snapdragon 820 CPU and 4GB of RAM ensure you'll be future-proof well into your AT&T's service term.

• The loudspeaker isn't the loudest one around with a "good" score but you shouldn't be missing any calls.

• Clean audio output with external amp. Only minor degradation with headphones and above average volume.

• The 12MP camera is quick and delivers crisp photos with lightning fast autofocus. Images provide great detail and textures are exemplified well. Dynamic range is great and colors are well represented.

• The 5MP selfie camera is good enough and the wide-angle lens captures more of what's around you, but Samsung needs to opt for a higher resolution sensor in its next iteration. The front-facing camera is also not very good at high dynamic ranges.

• 4K video is amazingly detailed. 1080p 60fps video is smooth and crisp, though we still wished 4K video was digitally stabilized like 1080p modes are.

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