Samsung Galaxy S7 vs. Apple iPhone 6s: Sixes and sevens

Loudspeaker

Neither Samsung nor Apple has been bitten by the stereo speaker bug and their single loudspeakers are nothing to brag about as both scored Below Average.

Both perform very similarly across the board, you're unlikely to hear a difference in loudness.

Tie. We guess the waterproofing hurt the Galaxy S7 loudspeaker performance, but at the end of the day neither phone is particularly loud.

Audio quality

The two contestants were neck and neck when tested with an active external amplifier, producing output worthy of their flagship standing. However the iPhone 6s fell just short in terms of stereo quality as its crosstalk reading was higher, causing .

Plugging our standard headphones caused some extra crosstalk to appear in the Galaxy S7 output, but it still ended up a little better than the iPhone 6s. Keep in mind that the difference is absolutely impossible to notice without using dedicated equipment as we do. The two phones are also on par in terms of volume so there’s nothing separating them here.

Anyway, here go the results so you can do your comparisons.

Samsung Galaxy S7 frequency response

Apple iPhone 6s frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S7 (only just). The slightly better stereo when used with an external amplifier is what grants it the victory here and only because we have actual numbers to compare. In real life scenarios the two are so close that it would take a really trained ear to tell them apart.