Samsung on Thursday launched its flagship phablet for 2016 in India. The Galaxy Note 7 has been priced at Rs. 59,900, and will become available in the country from September 2 in Gold Platinum, Silver Titanium, and Black Onyx colour variants.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 variant that has been launched in India is the dual-SIM one, featuring a hybrid dual-SIM slot that can take a microSD card (up to 256GB) instead of the second SIM card. The Blue Coral colour variant of the smartphone that was introduced in other regions was not launched in India at this time.
Pre-bookings start from August 22 and last till August 30, with the company specifying that units will be available in limited quantities in this period. As a pre-booking offer (up till August 30), users can get the new Gear VR at a discounted price of Rs. 1,990. The company has also announced that interested users can avail of the Reliance Jio Preview Offer, which comes with voice and data benefits for 90 days, alongside access to the Jio Digital Life content service.
The Galaxy Note 7’s highlight features are its iris scanner, the first time Samsung has introduced the feature on one of its smartphones, apart from the improved S Pen stylus and dual-edge 5.7-inch QHD (1440×2560 pixels) Super Amoled display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The smartphone (and the S Pen stylus bundled alongside) is also IP68 certified for dust and water resistance, just like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge from earlier this year. As with previous flagship models, the phablet packs a fingerprint sensor on the home button and is also compatible with the Samsung Pay mobile payment service.
Running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Samsung’s own skin atop, the Galaxy Note 7 variant in India is powered by a Samsung Exynos 8890 Octa SoC (four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four cores clocked at 1.6GHz), coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Some regions including the US will receive a variant powered by the Snapdragon 820 SoC (two Kryo cores clocked at 2.15GHz and two Kyro cores clocked at 1.6GHz).
As for optics, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sports a 12-megapixel rear camera with Dual Pixel technology for better low-light photography, phase detection autofocus (PDAF), optical image stabilisation (OIS), an f/1.7 aperture, dual-LED flash, and Auto-HDR feature. The front camera on the other hand sports a 5-megapixel sensor with an f/1.7 aperture
The phablet sports 64GB of inbuilt storage, which as we already mentioned can be expanded by microSD card (up to 256GB). The Galaxy Note7 is powered by a 3500mAh non-removable battery, which the company says supports fast charging on both wired and wireless chargers, with the smartphone compatible with WPC and PMA wireless charging standards.
Connectivity options on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS/ A-GPS, NFC, MST, and USB Type-C. Sensors on board include an acceleromenter, ambient light sensor, barometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and a proximity sensor. The smartphone weighs in at 169 grams, and measures 153.5×73.9×7.9mm.
The improved S Pen features on the Galaxy Note 7 that Samsung is touting include the ability to create gif image animations from videos using the Smart Select feature, apart from new Air Command functions for magnify and translate. The S Pen now also has a smaller tip than the previous iteration, and Samsung is touting improved pressure sensitivity.
Coming to security features, Samsung says the Galaxy Note 7’s Knox security suite now supports biometric authentication from both the iris scanner and fingerprint scanner. The company is also touting the new Secure Folder that files as well as entire apps in a secure, separate location – this also allows users to have two instances of the same app on the smartphone.