If the small trickle of smartphone-specific announcements coming out CES has you down, we have a fresh Galaxy S7 rumour to cheer you up. This one comes courtesy of VentureBeat, which claims it was briefed by someone from the company on the upcoming refresh of Samsung’s flagship lineup, expected to be announced next month at Mobile World Congress.
To start, most will be happy to learn that VentureBeat says expandable microSD storage is set to make a comeback with the S7 family, confirming earlier reports. Both the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge will include microSD slots, allowing users to add up to 200GB of extra storage to their smartphone.
Perhaps more interestingly, the S7 edge will be a bit different than its predecessor. Primarily, with a display that’s said to be 5.5-inches in size, the new edge will be somewhere between the original 5.1-inch S6 edge and more recently released 5.7-inch S6 edge+.
Removable battery packs, unfortunately, aren’t set to make a return. That said, to make up for the fact, both phones will feature significantly larger batteries. The S7 will include a 3,000mAh cell, while its curved sibling will come with a 3,600mAh power pack. Both phones will also be water and dust resistant.
In this way, Samsung seems intent to bring back some of the more well-received features of the Galaxy S5, though it will be interesting to see if the company manages to manufacture a metal chassis that is meaningfully waterproof. After all, it took Sony several years of iterating on its Xperia line to create a metal smartphone case that is both waterproof and well-designed. It’s unclear whether the Galaxy S7 family will feature a cover for the USB Type-C port that has been rumoured to make the jump to Samsung’s flagships.
Not mentioned in VentureBeat‘s report are some of the more unusual features we heard about initially in The Wall Street Journal‘s report that came out late last year. There’s no mention here of a pressure sensitive display or retinal scanner — though, to be fair, the WSJ did say there was a good chance some of the features it was told about, particularly the retinal scanner, wouldn’t make it into final release hardware. In a lot of ways, this seems to be an iterative release for Samsung.
Finally, Venturebeat proffers that the Galaxy S7’s camera will actually be reduced from a 16MP sensor to a more reasonable 12MP, which would allow for larger individual pixels, substantially improving the device’s low-light camera quality.
As in past years, the company plans to announce its new flagship lineup in late February at Mobile World Congress.
[source]VentureBeat[/source]
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