Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Smartphone Review – An economical rugged phone with a removable battery

The XCover 7 is a very well-protected smartphone. Its main camera and screen are sunk in to protect them from scratches. The screen is also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ – this is a special variant of the Victus glass that was developed for Samsung. It doesn't quite reach the stability of the most recent Victus 2 but was also used in the Galaxy S22 and should provide decent protection.  

Samsung has certified its smartphone to IP68 and MIL-STD-810H standards to confirm it is protected from dust and can handle immersion in freshwater, provided it is not too deep, without damage. The phone should also easily survive being dropped from chest height and can regularly be cleaned with disinfectant.

The device has more or less the same dimensions as the Galaxy XCover 6 Pro and is only 10.2 mm thick, making it a fairly slim outdoor phone. At 240g, the phone is easy to hold without it becoming tiring.  

The screen shows ripples when pressure is applied to the screen and the phone can be warped slightly by hand, causing the back cover to creak audibly. The device is fairly robust overall, though Samsung could have made it even more trustworthy with a little more care.

The device is only available in black, with the orange accents on the large XCover key and framing the main camera giving the device a more relaxed look. The back cover is embellished with diagonal grooves in four slightly raised blocks. This looks good and makes the phone easier to grip. There is no rubber coating, however.

The microSD card reader is accessible by removing the back cover and is not connected to the SIM slot. The phone can read cards with up to 1 TB of storage capacity.

The reader performed well in our trial with our Angelbird V60 reference card, achieving read rates of around 33.5 MByte/s and reaching a similar level to its comparison devices in the CPDT benchmark.   

The XCover7 is a 5G smartphone. The phone covers a wide range of frequencies both in the LTE and the 5G network, which means it can be used to access mobile internet in many countries. Its signal strength could be better: the Samsung smartphone lags behind many high-end phones despite its plastic back.

Of course, the device also works on Wi-Fi. It supports the WiFi 5 standard and can achieve transfer rates of around 300-340 MBit/s. This is similar to most outdoor phones but quite a bit slower than the XCover 6 Pro, which came close to fully utilizing Gigabit connections. 

With the XCover7, you will have to wait a moment for large websites to load – even when standing close to the router. Images take particularly long to appear while scrolling. Reception drops to 3/4 at a distance of 10 meters and through 3 walls, with websites only taking a little longer to load. 

Samsung uses its own telephone app that places more focus on the keypad than Google's standard app. Recent calls and contacts can be accessed through tabs. You can easily also block individual phone numbers or hidden callers within the app. 

The voice quality is fairly decent through the earpiece and integrated microphone, both for the user and the person at the other end. However, it is important to speak loudly and clearly, or else the microphone won't register your voice.

On speakerphone, the other party sounds very loud yet also unpleasantly treble-heavy at maximum volume. This can be avoided by turning down the volume where possible. The speaker also adds reverberation that is not audible when talking through the earpiece. The hands-free microphone only registers our voice when we speak loudly enough.

Both microphones have medium capability for suppressing loud background noise. Still, the other party was able to understand us fairly well even in loud surroundings.

We took the main camera through its paces in our lab, where we photographed our test chart in full studio lighting and at 1 lux. Contrasts could be higher in good lighting, but the image sharpness hardly drops towards the edges. In low lighting, you can still roughly make out the image but the camera can no longer show details.

Samsung appears stingy when it comes to accessories: it has chosen not to include a charger and instead only provides a single USB cable. The removable back cover makes SIM tools superfluous.

Users who need a charger can purchase one for €10 from the Samsung Amazon store. For companies, third-party providers now offer charging stations for up to 10 or more devices. A suitable replacement battery is available online for around €30-40.

The Galaxy XCover 7 generally comes with a 24-month warranty. The Enterprise Edition covers 36 months.  

The system is also a lot slower than its competitors when it comes to graphics. The framerates of the Galaxy XCover6 Pro are up to twice as fast. Users who require graphically demanding apps or enjoy playing a game or two on their phone should carefully consider whether the performance is sufficient.

The browser results aren't that bad, but this may be due to the more modern Chrome version in which we tested the benchmarks. Large websites load quite slowly and it takes a while for images to become visible when scrolling.

Samsung skimped on memory and only used UFS 2.1 technology, which is further slowed down by a somewhat sluggish memory controller. As a result, data transfers and load times take longer than on many comparable devices.

We measured a temperature of up to 42 °C after prolonged load. This will be noticeable to the user and could be even higher on hot summer days.

This temperature development doesn't seem to impact the SoC. Performance was not reduced in our 3DMark stress tests. 

The small speaker at the bottom of the phone is solely responsible for sound output, which means that the device is not able to output stereo sound. Still, the speaker is decent and produces a good volume of up to 84.3 dB(A). Highs are very pronounced and users shouldn't expect to hear low mids or bass tones. The sound becomes more balanced at lower volumes. 

If you want good sound, the best choice is probably to connect headphones or speakers via the 3.5mm audio jack or Bluetooth. Don't expect too many Bluetooth audio codecs either: Samsung usually limits itself to its own SSC and the bare essentials from other providers. This is also the case with this smartphone, which offers a choice of SBC, AAC, aptX and LDAC. 

The smartphone's energy management is pleasingly low, particularly under high load. But of course performance is comparatively low as well.

The device can be charged with up to 15 watts. The phone does not come with a charger included. All our USB chargers from various manufacturers worked perfectly and fully recharged the empty battery within 2 hours.

The battery has a fairly small capacity of 4050 mAh. Its runtimes are slightly better than those of the Galaxy XCover 6 Pro but cannot keep up with the other comparison devices. Remember, however, that the battery can be replaced fairly easily, which means you can multiply the battery life by however many batteries you have on you.

Even with only one battery, though, the battery life is decent and should keep you going for a day of average use and also cover several episodes of your favorite show.

The robust Galaxy Tab Active 5 tablet has a no-battery mode where the tablet can be used without a battery when connected to the grid. This makes sense in particularly hot environments that could harm the battery, for example. Unfortunately, this mode isn't available for the Galaxy XCover7. If you remove the battery while the device is plugged in, the screen stays on for a second, but then the device switches off and cannot be reactivated permanently without a battery.

The Galaxy XCover7 is currently available in Europe and can be purchased from the Samsung store.