The dust still hasn't settled from the recent launches of Samsung's latest flagship phones, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, but we're already being inundated with leaks about Samsung's next-generation handset, the Galaxy S7, which is expected in early 2016.
The S7, which goes by the codename "Project Lucky" to refer to the hopefully fortuitous seventh generation of Samsung's Galaxy phone line, looks to right Samsung's market woes. The electronics giant has seen disappointing sales results during the past two quarters. But with the current Galaxy S6 already pushing the limits in both smartphone performance and photography, what could Samsung possibly have in store for the S7?
Design
According to Korean site inews24.com, Samsung may move away from the glass body seen on the S6 in favor of a magnesium-based unibody design. Magnesium-alloy has long been used in high-end camera frames (including Samsung's pro-level NX1 mirrorless camera) due to its durability; bringing this design to the S7 would also improve heat dissipation and lighten the phone compared to the S6's mostly glass body.
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Another report from Korean outlet Kbench indicates that Samsung has filed a trademark for something called Turtle Glass. This means the Korean tech giant may ditch Corning's Gorilla Glass, which is responsible for the sturdy, scratch resistant panel that protects the S6's screen, in favor of its own super-tough display-saving tech.
Specs
Leaks from SamMobile gives us an early idea of the components that may come in the S7, which could include a either a new Exynos 8890 chip or a Snapdragon 820 processor and a 20-megapixel rear camera. The timing for the Snapdragon 820 seems about right after Qualcomm itself said that its next-generation processor should be available in early 2016, and that the new chip will include features such as a more powerful Adreno 530 GPU, increased energy efficiency and the new Spectra image signal processor for better photos.
We expect RAM to stay at the same 4GB levels we've seen on the Note 5 and S6 Edge Plus, but SamMobile reports that the S7 may herald the return of microSD storage to the Galaxy line. On the Note 5 and Galaxy S6 phones, Samsung cut the microSD card slots because of incompatibilities with its speedy UFS 2.0 storage system, but it seems that sometime in 2015, Samsung figured out a way to make these two technologies play nice and work together.
Screen
An article from a third Korean site, VIP.MK, also indicates that the S7 will launch with 5.7-inch screen. This would be a huge leap from the 5.1-inch display found on the regular S6, although it's hard to believe that Samsung would completely abandon other more hand-friendly dimensions.
Even with all these leaks and reports, there's still a lot of speculation left to be done. Samsung could push the display resolution from 2K to 4K like Sony did with the Xperia Z5 Premium, or debut a new iteration of the popular curved screen tech we've seen on the S6 Edge and S6 Edge Plus.
However, we may only have to wait until late February 2016 to find out, as historically Samsung has made major phone announcements each year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, which takes places from February 22 to 25, 2016.
Source: Galaxy S7 Rumor Roundup: Metal Body, Return of MicroSD
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