SAMSUNG GALAXY S - 2016 Edition

Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge are Android smartphones manufactured and marketed by Samsung Electronics. The S7 series is a successor to the 2015 Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+, and was officially unveiled on 21 February 2016 during a Samsung press conference at Mobile World Congress, with a European and North American release scheduled for 11 March 2016. As with the S6, the S7 is produced in a standard model, as well as an "Edge" variant whose screen is wrapped along the sides of the device.


The Galaxy S7 is an evolution of the prior year's model, restoring design traits from the Galaxy S5 such as IP certification for water and dust resistance, as well as expandable storage.

Hardware

The Galaxy S7's hardware design is largely identical to that of the S6, retaining its metal and glass chassis, but with refinements such as a flatter home button, and a thinner protrusion for the camera. Both models will be available in black and gold colors; a white and silver version will be available depending on the market. The S7 and S7 Edge are IP68-certified for dust and water resistance; unlike the Galaxy S5, the S7's ports are sealed and thus, do not have protective flaps. Moisture in the charging port prevents the phone from charging.

Galaxy S7 devices are equipped with a Samsung Exynos 8890 system-on-chip and 4 GB of RAM. In the United States and China, the S7 uses the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, as unlike Exynos, it supports the CDMA networks which are still extensively used by some U.S. and China carriers. The heat from the processor is transferred with a 0.4mm thick water-to-steam heat pipe cooling system. The S7 includes either 32 or 64 GB of internal storage (in most markets only the 32 GB model will be available). The micro SD card slot was restored, enabling expansion of storage capacity. Both the S7 and S7 Edge feature a 1440p Super AMOLED display; the S7 has a 5.1-inch panel, while the S7 Edge now uses a larger 5.5-inch panel. As with the prior model, the S7 Edge's screen is curved along the side bezels of the device. Both models also have larger batteries in comparison to the S6, with 3000 mAh and 3600 mAh capacity respectively and support for wireless charging. The S7 features a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera with a "Dual Pixel" image sensor and f/1.7 aperture lens. Like the Galaxy S6, Samsung is also implementing 2 different camera sensors on the GS7, one Sony and one ISOCELL, which caused quite a stir last year when users reported ISOCELL sensors on their Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+, which also made its way to the smaller flagships the GS6 and GS6 Edge.

Software

The Galaxy S7 ships with Android 6.0 "Marshmallow" and Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz software suite. A new "Always On" functionality displays a clock and notifications on-screen when the device is in standby; the display is turned off completely if the device's proximity sensor detects that it is in an enclosed space such as a pocket. Samsung claims this feature would only consume half a percentage of battery capacity per-hour. New widget panes can be displayed on the edge of the S7 Edge, in "Edge Single" and wider "Edge Single Plus" sizes. Android Marshmallow's "adopted storage" feature was disabled by Samsung and is not usable.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 received support for the Vulkan 1.0 low-level rendering API
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The Galaxy S7 received generally positive reviews with critics praising the return of the micro SD card slot and waterproofing, though some felt the device was too similar to the preceding Galaxy S6