Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge to take on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus from Apple. Learning a lesson or two from Apple, Samsung this year has not refreshed the design of its flagship Galaxy handsets, but only given them minor design tweaks. However, it did add one notable new feature to them that instantly makes them stand apart from Apple’s offering: IP68 waterproofing.
While the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus don’t feature waterproofing, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are rumored to come with water resisting capabilities.
Also, to better differentiate between its lineup and to rival Apple’s offering better, Samsung has gone in for a larger 5.5-inch curbed display on the Galaxy S7 edge this time around. The Galaxy S7 continues to come with a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display, though it can now reach higher brightness levels. Another trick up their sleeve is their ability to remain always-on and show the time/date and other relevant information.
Under the hood, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge will feature an octa-coreExynos 8890 chipset, which is the company’s first chipset to make use of its own custom ARM cores running at 2.4GHz. In certain markets, Samsung will be launching the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chip clocked at 2.15GHz. To avoid any heating issues, Samsung is also introducing a cooling system with its new handsets, which essentially involves a heat pipe with a special cooling liquid being present inside it. Other specs include a fingerprint sensor, 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, heart rate monitor, Samsung Pay support, 32/64GB internal memory and a microSD card slot.
The rear of the phones come with a 12MP ‘dual pixel’ camera that features larger 1.4u pixels, OIS and a wide f/1.7 aperture. This allows the Galaxy S7 to absorb more light in low-light situations and dual pixel — a technology usually found in DSLRs until now — allows the handsets to obtain focus in real time. During its presentation, Samsung made various comparisons to the iPhone 6s Plus to show how much better the camera on the Galaxy S7 is. Samsung has also introduced Motion Photos and Motion Panorama modes in the camera app on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, which is similar to the Live Photos feature found on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The front of the phones feature a 5MP shooter with an f/1.7 aperture.
On the software front, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the latter coming with new ‘edge UX’ features.
Lastly, the Galaxy S7 is powered by a 3,000mAh battery — which is even bigger than the battery found on the iPhone 6s Plus, while the Galaxy S7 edge comes with an even bigger 3,600mAh battery. The handsets also feature fast charging and wireless charging. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge will be going on sale in the United States on March 11 and in other key markets from mid-March.
https://youtu.be/cyohHyQl-kc
What do you think about the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge? Do you think you will ditch your iPhone for one of them?
