Samsung Unveils New Galaxy S7 in Latest Phase of Apple Battle
Samsung Unveils New Galaxy S7 in Latest Phase of Apple
Battle
By Jungah Lee, Selina Wang and Nate Lanxon
February 21, 2016 — 10:00 AM PST
The S7 sports a 5.1-inch screen using its own Exynos or
Qualcomm Inc. processors, with a larger 5.5-inch Edge model equipped with the
same kind of wraparound display the company debuted last year. While the new
phones look almost identical to the S6 line, Samsung is bringing back a
memory-card slot and adding a longer-life battery after the absence of a
removable power unit alienated fans last year.
Samsung’s efforts to win back customers from Apple and
Chinese vendors saw it keep the form and shape of last year’s models while
fixing its shortcomings amid a weakening global market for smartphones. With
earnings sliding and the shares battered by three straight annual declines,
South Korea’s biggest company needs a hit product after the S6 failed to set
the records that had been predicted.
"The market for the smartphone is obviously slowing
down a little bit," Jean-Daniel Ayme, vice president of European telecom
operations at Samsung, said in an interview. It is "still growing,"
he said, "but there is much more than just a phone that you’re holding in
your hands. When you’re using one of these new devices, this is more than a
phone, this is your camera, your MP3 player, your TV, your recorder, it’s
everything and more, and more is coming."
Reduced Drain
Samsung abandoned removable batteries and a memory card
slot from its marquee phone last year as it sought to make its devices thinner
and use more premium materials such as metal casings, like Apple does. The move
backfired as it eliminated two key ways in which the company’s devices were
differentiated from iPhones. Samsung cut prices on the S6 smartphones in July
last year, just three months after launch.
"A very important aspect of using your phone
throughout the whole day is the battery and the performance," said Ayme.
"This phone is more powerful than any phone we have launched in the past,
but it also has optimized software that will reduce the battery drain, and we
have managed to put a larger battery in a smaller package."
Heads Up
Investors are keeping an eye on the smartphone’s public
unveiling at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and on its ability to
stand out from a thicket of devices -- from LG Electronics Inc.’s G5 and Xiaomi
Corp.’s Mi 5 -- that are being unveiled in Spain. LG’s 5.3-inch smartphone will
go on sale globally as early as the end of March, except in Japan, said Woo Ram
Chan, vice president of LG’s mobile product planning division.
The Galaxy S7 “should provide a point of inflection for
the share price,” Soh Hyun Cheol, a Seoul-based analyst at Shinhan Investment
Corp., wrote after Samsung reported disappointing quarterly earnings last
month. Longer term, the company is “in need of innovative products.”
The new S7 models are waterproof for as long as 30
minutes in water 1.5 meters deep and come in gold, silver, white and black.
Also included is wireless charging and Marshmallow, the latest version of
Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The Galaxy maker, which is banking on
Samsung Pay as another differentiator, added Wells Fargo and TD Bank in North
America to the list of partners for its mobile payments service. The platform
will be rolled out in China next month.
Zero to Hero
Samsung’s codename for the S7 development project was
‘Hero’ while last year’s plan for the S6 adopted the title ‘Zero’ as the
company tried to return to the fundamentals in its design.
This year’s models hit the market globally on March 11,
about a month earlier than the S6 did in 2015. While wireless carriers will
decide on prices and calling plans, the S7s will probably be at a similar price
level to last year’s device, according to Drew Blackard, director of product
marketing at Samsung. Some operators could include a free Gear VR headset with
the S7, the company said without elaborating.
Samsung is also pushing new peripheral devices, including
a spherical camera that can be connected to the S7.
The Gear 360 features two back-to-back fisheye lenses
that each can capture a 180-degree image that can be streamed to the S7,
earlier S6 models and the Note 5. Samsung has been offering more wearable or
portable electronics products that can be paired with its phones and moving up
its product releases as it struggles to keep Apple at bay.
Social networks, including Facebook Inc. and Google’s
YouTube, recently starting supporting 360-degree videos -- a format used by
virtual reality hardware, and which on regular computers and mobile devices
allows viewers to dynamically alter the angle they view a scene from.
Ayme says this, coupled with the Samsung’s S7, Gear 360
camera and Gear VR headset, gives consumers a "full ecosystem" of
virtual reality. "Enabling users to create their own 360 content rather
than just counting on it becoming available," he says, creates a
"time for expansion" for the industry. "Something that used to
be only accessible to a few people with a lot of knowledge about computing and
with very powerful computing engines, is now available to everybody," he
said.
Spherical Camera
While the South Korean company remains the world’s
largest smartphone producer, its global market share fell in 2015 as Apple,
Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. won customers, according to researcher
Strategy Analytics Inc.
Samsung last month warned of falling global demand and
economic turbulence after its quarterly earnings missed analysts’ estimates.Its
shares have declined 5.6 percent so far this year after dropping 5.1 percent in
2015.
About half of the S7 phones will run on Samsung’s own Exynos
8 processors while the remaining half will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chips
after Samsung turned away from the U.S. chipmaker last year, people close to
the matter said in January.
Samsung, which misread demand for the S6 when it failed
to produce enough three-sided screens for the Edge, said it won’t face the same
problem this year.
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