They do use a different criteria- is it made by Apple or not?
Seriously you can't defend Nilay. His Apple fanboyism is famous at this point.
A score of 7 is fanboyism? The Galaxy S7 getting a higher score than the iPhone 6s is fanboyism?
This is what I'm talking about. There's an urge to spin any semi-positive take on a given company's products (especially Apple) as proof that a site is in a company's pocket. Gave it a 7? It really deserved a 5.
Like how the fonts on the non-plus iPhone look like crap compared to every other flagship phone since 2013? Or how the 1Gb of RAM iPhone 6 was a Safari tab reloading beast? Or how the current iPhone's bevels are so large compared to Android phones the device LOOKS years older than the competition? Nah, they never share those real-world experiences.
I'll let you in on a little secret:
Those aspects don't really matter to most people.
First: at least in my experience, the fonts on my iPhone 6 look fine. Not as good as on a 1080p or quad HD phone, of course, but they're not "crap." Yes, the 1GB of RAM can make Safari reloading annoying, but how many people do you know not only keep several browser tabs open, but insist on maintaining the exact page state in every one? And bezels? You can certainly complain if they make a device too wide or tall, but "it makes the phone look old" is both too subjective and not exactly a burning point of contention.
This is what drives me nuts -- that tendency for fans to make mountains out of molehills, and then accuse sites of unfair bias because they're not looking at the molehills. The Galaxy S7 isn't a great phone because it has more RAM, thinner bezels or prettier fonts. It's the top-level things that matter: it's practically fast, is well-designed as a whole, and improves those elements that real people notice every day, like battery life.
AKA: "It validates Apple not changing their form factor every year."
Talk about contorting data to support a point. You do realize that you're saying The Verge (and it's not even Nilay) is giving the S7 a glowing review to make Apple look better, right? That's some next-level conspiracy theory creation. Occam's Razor: they genuinely liked both phones, and the S7 slightly more so.