General hands-on Samsung Galaxy S7

Vlen123 · February 22, 2016

It looks almost exactly the same as the S6!

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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 2,560×1,440-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

Samsung is also getting into motion — think iPhone 6S’ Live Photos — with two new features.

Motion photo: This takes photos of moving subjects, like kids, dogs or concerts. After turning it on in the settings, it captures a few seconds of video each time you snap that shutter. This saves to the photo gallery as a proprietary file type, which you can’t widely share, but you can scrub along the video to choose a still, which saves as a sharable JPEG allowing you to choose the best shot from the action you just captured. As with Apple’s Live Photos, I’m really not sold on its usefulness.

Motion panorama: This camera mode takes a still shot of your scene, but it captures movement as you pan around, say a group of people waving hello. You can also share it as a video. It’s kind of a cool new feature, and I can see it making panorama shots more dynamic, especially in outdoor landscapes (I’m thinking of flying birds and swaying foliage).

Learn more about Galaxy s7 >>