Samsung’s Galaxy S flagship smartphones are some of the popular Android smartphones around, so it’s no surprise that there have already been a few rumors about the Galaxy S7 in the months leading up to its launch. Today a report from the Wall Street Journal added fuel to the S7 fire with some rumors of its own.
The WSJ claims that one of the biggest new features of Samsung’s Galaxy S7 will be a pressure-sensitive screen, similar to the 3D Touch feature found on Apple’s iPhone 6s. This gives the user access to shortcuts, like jumping directly to the selfie camera from the iPhone’s home screen, as well as features like previewing a link without leaving the page that you’re already on. It’s likely that Samsung will bake special features into its custom TouchWiz user interface that take advantage of the GS7’s special screen.
The Galaxy S7 is also rumored to be coming with a USB Type-C charging port like the one found on Google’s Nexus 5X and 6P. This fast charging port will reportedly let you juice up the GS7 with a “a full day’s charge” in less than 30 minutes, possibly even less. Considering that Google has officially baked USB Type-C support into Android 6.0 and that other device makers are starting to adopt USB Type-C, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Galaxy S7 include a USB Type-C port as well.
Rounding out the list of rumored Galaxy S7 features is a retina scanner for additional security beyond the fingerprint reader that’s on the Galaxy S6, though that feature may only be on some versions of the S7. The S7 will also reportedly have improved low-light performance on its rear camera, which will allegedly be flush with the phone’s rear rather than stick out like it did on the GS6. Finally, one source claims that the regular Galaxy S7 will have a microSD slot, but that the Galaxy S7 edge will not.
The Galaxy S7 is said to be slated for a debut at Mobile World Congress in late February, followed by a US launch in mid-March. Samsung has released several past Galaxy S phones at MWC as well, and while the Galaxy Note 5 was announced earlier in 2015 than its predecessors in years past, Samsung has no new iPhone to try and beat to market in the early part of the year like it did with the Note 5 and its fall launch. The Galaxy S7 is expected to look largely similar to the Galaxy S6.
While all of this information is unconfirmed, much of it would make sense for a new Galaxy S phone. A USB Type-C port, in addition to gaining support from Google, would also make users’ lives easier since it offers a reversible design. Low-light camera improvements would be a good addition since many folks rely solely on their smartphone to take photos. And then there are features like the pressure-sensitive display and retina scanner, which add new ways to interact with a device and help to grow a new phone’s feature set rather than simply relying on spec upgrades.
What do you think of this rumored Galaxy S7? Will you buy one if today’s report becomes reality?