Samsung Galaxy Note 7: Top 5 New Features

Samsung on Tuesday launched the Galaxy Note 7 at its Galaxy Note Unpacked 2016 events in New York, London, and Rio de Janeiro, and the smartphone will go on sale in several countries this month.

Price and availability details for various regions have been revealed, with the smartphone priced at EUR 699 (roughly Rs. 52,300) in some European regions, and while different US carriers have different prices, T-Mobile's SIM-free pricing of $850 (roughly Rs. 56,800) is indicative. Pre-orders have begun in the US from Wednesday, and the smartphone should become available in the country by August 19, while in Europe pre-orders begin on August 16.

(Also See: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Full Specifications)

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is expected to be launched in India on August 11, however, no pricing details are available yet.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sports some impressive features and specifications, such as the 5.7-inch QHD (1440x2560 pixels) dual-edge Super Amoled display and S Pen stylus. The smartphone comes with Snapdragon 820 and Exynos 8890 SoC options for different regions, coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. It also sports an iris scanner feature, which isn't the first time a manufacturer has offered the feature, but the first time Samsung has on a smartphone.

(Also see: How Is Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Still a Thing?)

We decided to take a look at just what the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 offers that's new, making the smartphone unique both in the company's own lineup as well as the global smartphone market. Here are the five new features of the Galaxy Note 7 that you need to know about:

1. Iris scanner
As we mentioned, other manufacturers have included this feature before, and even Samsung had implemented the iris scanner on its Galaxy Tab Iris tablet. However, this is Samsung's first smartphone to feature an Iris Scanner. The iris scanner feature lets you unlock the smartphone by looking at it, and according to the company's claims, it is more secure than a fingerprint scanner (which is also available on the phone).

2. Upgraded S Pen
Samsung's S Pen stylus is synonymous with the Note series but this time around it has seen a major upgrade. Now the stylus is not only dust and water resistant with IP68 certification, it also has a finer point with a tip which is 0.7mm smaller than its predecessor. The pressure sensitivity on S Pen has also been increased to 4,096 levels from 2,048 on earlier models. In terms of software that goes along with the stylus, you can now create gif images out of videos with the help of S Pen and other additions include new Air Command functions for magnifying and translation.

3. Samsung Cloud
Samsung unveiled its cloud service named Samsung Cloud at the Galaxy Note 7's launch event, and the smartphone is the first to come with access to the service. Samsung is giving buyers of the phablet users 15GB of free storage to backup the data on their devices. Apart from backup, the cloud service also allows for easy transfer of data, apps, settings, and layouts between devices.

4. Corning Gorilla Glass 5
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 became the first smartphone to feature Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, which was unveiled last month and is said to be the strongest glass the popular glassmaker has made yet. The company has even claimed that the Corning Gorilla Glass 5 in its internal lab tests survived up to 80 percent of the time when dropped face-down from a height of up to 1.6 metres.

5. HDR streaming
Samsung's latest entry to the Galaxy Note series is also the first smartphone to support content streaming in High Dynamic Range or HDR. The South Korean smartphone manufacturer has partnered with Amazon to provide HDR streaming on Samsung Galaxy Note 7. In order to make this possible, the company took its expertise in TV manufacturing and adapted the technology to its mobile phone chipset.