With the Galaxy Note 7 permanently out of commission, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are the two smartphones Samsung is relying on to help it navigate through the tough times. It is a good thing then that the later has often been rated as one of the top smartphones in the world by a number of consumer analytics companies and tech sites. While Strategy Analytics had earlier this year crowned the Galaxy S7 Edge as the world’s best smartphone, the latest accolade for Samsung’s premium handset comes from French tech site, PhonAndroid. However, instead of turning its study into a more subjective analysis to crown the ‘Best Smartphone of 2016’, PhonAndroid took a closer look at a crucial, but often disregarded aspect of today’s smart gadgets – radiation.
The French tech site earlier this week published a report on the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of ten best-selling smartphones this year, which includes the likes of the Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the Huawei P9 and Honor 8, the Asus ZenFone 3 and the Lenovo Moto Z among other notable devices. According to its report, the Galaxy S7 Edge has a SAR value of just 0.264W/kg, which is lower than any of the other devices on the list. The Asus ZenFone 3 comes in at number two with 0.278W/kg, while the Galaxy A5 and the Moto Z slots in at numbers three and four respectively with values of 0.290W/kg and 0.304W/kg. At the other end of the spectrum, Huawei’s Honor 8 and Huawei P9 smartphones were rated as the two handsets with the highest amount of radiation, with 1.5 W/kg and 1.43W/kg respectively. Apple did not do that well either, with its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus clocking SAR values of 1.38W/kg and 1.24W/kg respectively.
In case you’re unsure about what SAR is, it is defined by Wikipedia as “a measure of the rate at which energy is absorbed by the human body when exposed to a radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic field” and is denoted in units of Watts per Kilogram (W/kg). Of course, all these smartphones are well within the safe limits prescribed by the WHO (World Health Organization) and various government agencies around the world, most of whom have laid down similar yardsticks for RF energy emitted by mobile devices. For example, the FCC in the U.S. requires smartphones sold in the country to have a SAR level of 1.6w/kg or less. So while all of these smartphones stay within the mandated levels, some manufacturers are apparently doing a better job than others in making sure their devices safe for their customers.