[REVEALED] Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge in The Mobile World Congress 2016 !

The new Samsung Galaxy S7 unmasked here at MWC in Barcelona is a beautiful specimen of cutting-edge tech and seductive metal-and-glass build."It looks almost exactly the same as the S6!" you say. And it does. But it also has things that Samsung stripped out of the S6. Important things, like a microSD card slot to store photos, movies and games (which means you won't have to buy a pricier model to get more storage). It's once again water-resistant, too. Battery capacity swells, and both the camera and processor promise sharp performance. (But you still can't remove the battery as you can on the metal LG G5, announced here a few hours earlier.)

If you already own an S6 or S6 Edge, the specs might be too similar to what you already pocket to truly entice you. I'm battling my own expectations as I type this, because it doesn't seem like much has changed compared to similar Samsung phones, like the S6 Edge+, released only a handful of months before. On the other hand, the S7 (and larger-screen S7 Edge) has the makings to be of one of the year's best phones, and features such as wireless charging and expandable storage play a big part in that -- especially since these are features the iPhone lacks.

Still, year-to-year sameness is a problem that Samsung in particular has to face. The Korean megacompany has steadily lost money and market share to brands selling less expensive -- and often less distinctive -- phones. Samsung needs the Galaxy S7 and larger S7 Edge to resonate with buyers or else continue to watch aggressive brands like Xiaomi and Huawei eat its lunch.

The S7 and S7 Edge are available March 11, with preorders beginning February 23. Samsung hasn't announced pricing, but it did announce a deal: If you buy either S7 phone between February 23 and March 18, Samsung will give you a free Gear VR virtual-reality headset with a bundle of six games. The Gear VR will work with both new S7 phones.

New and notable features

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow software
• 5.1-inch screen with 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution
• Either 32 or 64GB of storage, depending on the region
• MicroSD card slot for extra storage up to 200GB
• 12-megapixel camera (get the story below)
• Water-resistant (IP68 rating)
• 3,000 mAh battery (versus 2,550 mAh on Galaxy S6)
• "Always-on" display shows time, calendar or images from the lock screen
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor (or Samsung's Exynos chipset in some regions)
• Dedicated gaming feature makes it easier to record sessions and screenshots; a do-not-disturb mode blocks incoming notifications
• Colors: black onyx, gold platinum

Camera

Smartphone camera resolution has been increasing at a steady rate, with OEMs fueling a megapixel arms race. Because of physical size constraints for the sensor package, however, increasing the number of pixels generally means making them smaller. But smaller pixels capture less light, reducing dynamic range and low-light performance. Some OEMs, such as HTC and Apple, have favored using fewer, larger pixels to improve low-light capability at the expense of image detail.

With camera performance a high priority, Samsung is opting out of the megapixel race, choosing a completely new lower-resolution sensor with larger pixels for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. The 12 MP rear camera, the same resolution as the iPhone 6s, has 1.4μm

pixels. There's also a new lens array with a larger f/1.7 aperture that lets in 25% more light than the f/1.9 aperture lens in the Galaxy S6. Combining the sensor’s larger pixels with the lens’ lower f-stop allows the new camera to capture 95% more light than the previous generation, according to Samsung. It will be interesting to see if this new camera can actually outperform the Galaxy S6, which currently has the best smartphone camera we’ve tested, at least when using the 16 MP Sony IMX240 Exmor RS sensor (some Galaxy S6 phones use a Samsung S5K2P2 ISOCELL sensor that does not perform as well).

The demonstration shown by Samsung—shows a tantalizing hint of the new camera’s performance by pitting the Galaxy S7 against the iPhone 6s Plus. When the light inside the box is dimmed, the Galaxy S7 certainly appears to capture more light.

The video also shows off the Galaxy S7’s autofocus capability. The Galaxy S7, like the S6 and most other premium phones, uses phase detect autofocus (PDAF), which provides superior performance to the contrast detection method. However, the S7’s new camera

sensor uses far more pixels for phase detection: Where the Galaxy S6’s sensor only uses 0.78% of its total pixels as phase pixels, the S7’s new sensor uses 100% of its pixels. Samsung says that each pixel in its Dual Pixel sensor is split into two photodiodes. We're still not sure exactly how this works, but it seems to perform well based on Samsung's limited demo.

The other thing we're not sure about is if customers will still need to play the camera lottery with the S7. Samsung won't say, but based on the novelty of this sensor it seems likely that it's made by a single manufacturer.

Hardware

 

In the past, Samsung has equipped its Galaxy devices with different hardware for different regions, generally preferring Qualcomm SoCs for the North American market and its own Exynos chips for other regions. Last year, Samsung decided to use its Exynos 7420 SoC, the first to use a 14nm FinFET process, exclusively for its Galaxy S6 phones, avoiding the Snapdragon 810 and its thermal problems. With Samsung developing its own custom 64-bit CPU for the Exynos 8890, along with a new high-end Snapdragon from Qualcomm, it would not be surprising to see Samsung revert back to dual-sourcing SoCs for the Galaxy S7. While Samsung has not specified what chip will power its new flagship globally, we do know that the S7 will use Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 820 for the North American market.

Featuring four of Qualcomm's new custom 64-bit Kryo CPUs arranged in a heterogeneous dual-cluster configuration, with one cluster optimized for higher performance and the other optimized for lower power, the 820 focuses on improving single-threaded performance. In our performance preview of the Kirin 950, we found that Kryo holds an instructions per cycle (IPC) advantage over the Cortex-A72 CPU in both integer and floating point operations. However, octa-core SoCs such as the Kirin 950 can perform better when running multi-threaded workloads. The 820, coincidentally, uses Samsung’s second-generation 14nm LPP (Low Power Plus) FinFET process that enables lower power consumption at a slightly higher frequency than the first-generation LPE process used for the Exynos 7420.

Samsung pairs Qualcomm's SoC with 4GB of LPDDR4-1866 RAM, which should help alleviate the memory pressure problem that limited the Galaxy S6’s multitasking performance.

All of the Galaxy S6 phones include two or three options for internal storage capacity, with the S6 and S6 edge offering up to 128GB. The Galaxy S7 and S7 edge come in only one configuration, however: 32GB. If that's not enough, the internal UFS 2.0 NAND can be supplemented with a microSD card.

The Snapdragon 820 includes an integrated X12 LTE modem capable of Category 12 download speeds of up to 600Mbps and Category 13 upload speeds of up to 150Mbps. The Galaxy S7 also includes support for 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi, with peak theoretical throughput of up to 867Mb/s, and Bluetooth 4.2 LE.

 
Hardware support for Samsung Pay, the company's wireless payment system, first appeared on the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, with software and vendor support rolling out late last year. Like Apple Pay, it uses the fingerprint scanner to authorize payments at terminals supporting NFC. Unlike Apple Pay, Samsung's solution works at most traditional magnetic stripe credit card terminals too, making it a far more useful solution.

Software

Running atop Android 6.0.1, Samsung’s TouchWiz UI receives some refinements and new features. This latest build retains the mostly white interface with coordinated highlight colors that was introduced with the Galaxy S6. Looking more closely, however, reveals new application icons and a redesigned notification shade.

One of the new features is Always-On Display (AOD). Similar to

Google’s Ambient Display and Motorola’s Moto Display, this feature displays some basic information while the screen is locked, like a calendar, the time and date, or notifications. There's also an option to personalize what's displayed. Power drain is minimized by taking advantage of the AMOLED display’s ability to only illuminate the pixels in use, rather than turning on the entire panel like most IPS displays. AOD also uses the ambient light sensor to detect when the phone is placed inside a pocket or purse and turns itself off.

A new utility called “Game Tool” provides quick, in-game access to several features. One of its simplest tricks, but possibly the most useful, is keeping notifications from interrupting your gameplay. It also allows you to grab screenshots or record up to 6Mbps 1080p video to document your gaming skill. You can even record a voiceover using the phone’s microphone.

Edge UX, a feature unique to the Galaxy edge devices, undergoes a significant makeover and gains new functionality. For those not familiar with this feature, it's a panel that slides out from the curved edge of the screen that's meant to provide quick access to frequently used apps or favorite contacts, among other things. The most obvious change in this latest version is that the panel is now wider, allowing for two columns of circular icons rather than a single column like before.

In addition to the Apps and People edge panels mentioned above, there's a new Tasks edge that offers shortcuts to common tasks such as composing an email, taking a selfie, creating a calendar event, or opening a specific webpage. The new Quick tools edge displays a compass or a ruler, which can certainly come in handy.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi