What We Know: Samsung Galaxy S7 rumors and leaks thus far

Rather than passing along every single rumor that comes across our plate we’ve opted to cover only those devices that we find most relevant. To that end, the “What We Know” column aims to highlight the flagship smartphone models that are looming on the horizon.

What you’ll find below is a list of rumors, leaks, speculation, images, and other stuff that pertains to the Samsung Galaxy S7. We’ve done our best to gather up the juiciest stuff floating around, even if it conflicts with other reports. Unless otherwise noted, this is all to be considered unofficial and unconfirmed.

Note: this post will be updated continually until such time that the device is announced by Samsung.

Look

What we’ve seen so far from a Spigen leak seemingly confirms multiple variants of the Samsung Galaxy S7 will come out, just like with the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+.

Leaker @OnLeaks and uSwitch.com have also brought us these mock-ups.

Display

While there some dubious reports that the Samsung Galaxy S7 would feature a 4K screen, much like the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium, it appears the S7 may come in multiple sizes of a 2K screen. The Samsung Galaxy S7 is said to house a 2560 x 1440, 5.1″ screen while the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge offers a 5.5″ curved display at the same resolution. The Galaxy S6 came in at 5.2″ so the S7 appears to have a smaller screen by a tenth of an inch while the Edge variant will have a .3″ bigger screen.

We’ve also seen leaks of an Always On Display system much like that of the Nexus and Moto X phones that will display notifications and the time when the phone is picked up. Since the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will both employ Super AMOLED displays this feature would not require much battery usage and provide a significant feature.

Camera

In a move that competitors will surely pounce on, the Samsung Galaxy S7 could “only” have a 12 MP camera on the rear of the phone this year. While megapixels aren’t everything, Samsung has gone after Apple for YEARS about the lack of a higher megapixel count camera on its phones. The camera is tipped to have a f/1.7 aperture lens that will let in even more light in low-light situations than the Samsung Galaxy S6’s f/1.9 lens.

This year the camera is rumored to be flush with the body of the phone, a design we haven’t seen in a few years from Samsung. This doesn’t tell us if the body is thicker (unlikely) or the camera module has shrunken down to the point where it no longer sticks out.

The front facing camera may receive no true updates in this flagship, keeping its 5 MP wide-angle lens from the Galaxy S6 and Note 5, GSMArena has received a picture with what could be the new front facing camera module. The array of modules has the same model number as the Galaxy S7 with an “F” at the end indicating regional version.

In a teardown it was noted that the Galaxy S6’s connector was offset but this module has a centered connector. No other changes have been noted.

Internals

The internals of the Galaxy S7 have been one of the most widely leaked, and hotly debated topics in the past month or so. We’ve heard multiple leaks all with different information. Some have said that Samsung will release three different variants of the S7 all with different processors. Some have speculated that Samsung will stick with its own Exynos processors and use the next generation Exynos 8890 chip. What seems most likely is that Samsung will return to the Snapdragon processors its helping Qualcomm manufacture and use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor.

While this processor is the most likely for wide release, it does remain possible that Samsung will use the Exynos processor in other regions. As recently as the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung released phones with different processors in different regions.

The rumored Exynos 8890 processor is said to feature four 2.3GHz high powered cores and four 1.6GHz lower powered cores to save battery on less processor heavy tasks.

Rumors suggest that the S7 will have 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage with a 128GB model a possibility. Batteries will be bumped up to 3,000mAH and 3,600mAH for the S7 and S7 Edge respectively, with quick wireless charging that we saw in the Note 5 and S6 Edge+ and a USB Type-C connector.

According to some rumors the S7 and S7 Edge will bring back a much loved feature, the Micro SD card reader. It was rumored that the S6 dropped the slot due to slow read and write speeds, and whether that’s true or not, there was much backlash from fans who certainly missed having expandable storage.

OS

No specific leaks about the operating system have been released, but we expect to see the Samsung Galaxy S7 release with Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 with TouchWiz on top of it. With the Galaxy S6 we saw a refined and redesigned version of TouchWiz launch and we expect further refinements and improvements with the S7 and S7 Edge.

Other Details

From leaked pictures, and really the lack of any details that have come out so far, we expect to see roughly the same physical design for the Samsung Galaxy S7. This should include glass on the front and back, sandwiched around an aluminum frame. Samsung has never deviated from a physical home button so we expect one to show up on the S7 as well as a fingerprint sensor just like in the S6. With the addition of built-in fingerprint software natively in Android it could be possible to see further improvements in read accuracy and consistency.

Leaked pictures by OnLeaks show that the Galaxy S7 may have a rounded back just like the Note 5 featured last year. This helped with holding the phone. Even though a smaller 5.1″ device will be easier to handle the Note 5, this will still be a nice feature on the S7.

The S7 is also tipped to have its own version of Apple’s 3DTouch. Samsung has apparently teamed up with Synaptic to use its ClearForce technology. This will give the S7 the ability to determine how hard a user is pressing on the screen opening the phone up to registering many more gestures.

In the Samsung Galaxy S5 we saw water resistance, but it was shuttered in the S6 due to the new design. We may be seeing it make a return. Leaks suggest that the S7 will be IP67 dust and water resistant.

Launch

According to leaker Evan Blass, aka @evleaks, we may be seeing the Samsung Galaxy S7 a little bit earlier than we expected. The famous leaker tweeted that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will be released on March 11, 2016. Normally we see the newest Galaxy S phone released at Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain, but it doesn’t appear that will be the case this time.

Starting to look like a Friday, March 11th Galaxy release in the U.S.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 22, 2016

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Sources: VentureBeat, SlashGear 1, 2, uswitch, @evleaks

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