Over the past month, several major leaks have revealed much of what there is to know about the Galaxy Note 7. At the end of last week, noted tipster Evan Blass posted a new image of the device that answers any remaining questions surrounding its design.
The Galaxy Note 7 appears in what seems to be an official press render for the device. Front and back views are available in three different colours, Black Onyx, Silver Titanium and Blue Coral, the latter a shade that Samsung hasn’t experimented with before.
The renders reveal the phone will have dual-curved edges topped with flat angles for the bezels. The home button and fingerprint sensor are flanked by capacitive multitasking and back keys in the usual Samsung arrangement.
At the top of the device is what appears to be an iris scanner for biometric authentication, allowing Samsung to become one of few manufacturers to include such a system. Around the back, the camera protrudes from a small bump and both Samsung and Galaxy Note 7 branding is visible.
According to another recent leak from Blass, the phone’s display will be a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED panel. Underneath, power will come from either Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 processor or Samsung’s own Exynos 8893 silicon. The processor could be paired with as much as 6GB of RAM, allowing the Note 7 to remain one of the most capable multi-taskers around.
The phablet will reportedly have a 12-megapixel primary camera, 5-megapixel front camera, up to 256GB of storage, IP68 water and dust resistance, a USB Type-C port and a very large 4,000mAh battery.
Samsung is also expected to debut a new version of its TouchWiz Android skin to run atop Android 7.0 “Nougat.” In recent iterations of TouchWiz, Samsung has made major improvements to its speed and efficiency, changes that have been welcomed by users. The next version is likely to continue along these lines, cutting out the bloatware for a smoother experience. The device is expected to launch with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and receive an update to 7.0 at a later date.
You wouldn’t be alone if you think you’ve missed something after reading about the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung is indeed believed to be skipping the Galaxy Note 6, leaving it out of the schedule and jumping straight to the Note 7. It is making the move to pull the Note line closer to its main Galaxy S flagships.
Since its inception, the Note has always been one iteration newer than the S, leading to today’s situation where the S7 and Note 5 are its flagships. Samsung will unify the naming of the S and Note series for a more cohesive image.
The change could also allow Samsung to separate itself from the Note 5, which could prove useful in the markets Samsung decided not to launch it in. For reasons that were never fully explained, Samsung didn’t sell last year’s Note 5 in Europe, angering many fans of the productivity-focused phablet and eventually leading the company to admit its mistake. The Galaxy Note 7 is expected to be officially unveiled at an event on August 2.
