The South Korean giant, Samsung has finally launched its new flagship smartphones, dubbed as Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge at its Galaxy Unpacked 2016 event ahead of MWC 2016 Barcelona, yesterday. The flagship smartphones will be made available in 11 selected regions from March 11, with pre-orders starting from Tuesday. Samsung is also offering free Gear VR with six games, to anyone who is pre-ordering these two smartphones.
Like its last year’s flagships, there is hardly any difference between the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, except the screen size and battery. The Samsung Galaxy S7 features 5.1 inch Quad HD (2560 X 1440 pixels) Super AMOLED display with a pixel density 577 ppi (pixels per inch) and protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Whereas, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge flaunts a 5.5 inch Quad HD (2560 X 1440 pixels) Super AMOLED display with a pixel density 534 ppi dual edge screen and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The Galaxy S7 gets its juice from 3000 mAh battery, while S7 Edge is backed by a larger 3600 mAh battery, both supporting the fast charging and wireless charging features.
The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge will be powered by octa-core Snapdragon 820 SoC or Exynos 8890, depending on the region. However in India, it will be launched with the company’s own Exynos 8890 SoC. The chipset will be coupled with 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Both the flagship smartphones, will include 32 GB of internal storage space, which will be further expandable up to 200 GB via microSD slot cum second sim slot. The company has announced that both the smartphones will run on latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow based TouchWiz UI and will feature ‘Always On’ display and a fingerprint sensor.
On the photography front, both the flagship phones will boast a 12-megapixel ‘Dual Pixel’ rear camera with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), PDAF (Phase detection Autofocus), f/1.7 aperture and LED flash. It also has an 5 megapixel selfie camera with f/1.7 aperture on the front. The smartphones are IP68 certified that means they are dust and water resistant. Connectivity options on the phones includes 4G, 3G, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC and MST (for Samsung pay) and microUSB 2.0.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 measures 142.4 x 69.6 x 7.9 mm and weighs 152 g, while the Galaxy S7 Edge is sized at 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7 mm and weighs 157 g. The Galaxy S7 will be available in Black Onyx and Gold Platinum color variants, while S7 Edge will be available in Black Onyx, Gold Platinum and Silver Titanium color variants. Although the pricing has not been revealed yet, the Galaxy S7 might cost around 699 Euro (approx Rs. 53,000) and S7 Edge might be available for 799 Euro (approx. Rs. 60,000).
Along with these two smartphones, Samsung also announced the Gear 360, a spherical camera that can capture a 360-degree view as a high-quality image or video. It comes with two 15 megapixel sensors, which then work together to capture 3840×1920 pixels of 360-degree video, or 30-megapixel of images. It has a 128 GB internal storage using a microSD card, and houses a 1350mAh battery. It also has 0.5 inch PMOLED display and weighs 153 g. Samsung said it will be launched in Q2 2016.