According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Samsung will not showcase an all-new Galaxy S7 smartphone this year, but will simply improve over the existing Galaxy S6 series, similar to what Apple does with its iPhones.
The “s” model, will not just come with a few improvements, but will also retain the design of the current Galaxy S6 flagships. Those improvements will include a retina scanner, pressure sensitive display, a USB Type-C port and improved low-light camera.
While WSJ’s sources say that Samsung has not locked down on the retina scanner just yet, the rest of the new gizmos will make it to the upcoming refresh of the smartphone.
Retina scanners are currently in use on just two Android smartphones, Viewsonic’s V55 and the Fujitsu Arrows NX F-04G. While Android 6.0 Marshmallow currently supports fingerprint readers natively, it would make little sense to add an iris scanner. Being the only one in the smartphone market to sport one, also means that few developers will jump to add the new feature, keeping Samsung’s unique feature locked down to just native apps.
A pressure sensitive display may again see a similar fate as compared to the iPhone 6s’ 3D Touch that has seen a lot of developers flock to adopt it in their third-party apps. Still then, we can expect Samsung to follow Huawei’s Mate S and make use of the technology in its native apps.
The USB Type-C port as the WSJ sources say, will also be utilized to charge the device considerably faster than the current generation. On the other hand the improvements to the camera will focus on low-light photography.
Additionally, the same sources also say that Samsung will launch its Galaxy S7 into markets much faster compared to the Galaxy S6 which took about 6 weeks to arrive in stores after the official announcement.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 is expected to be launched in as many as 4 variants (edge and non-edge) at the MWC, Barcelona in early 2016.
