Samsung Galaxy S7 brings back water resistance, external storage

Samsung finally announced its much-anticipated Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge and the products were what could be expected given the company's past iterations. Samsung is known for its conservative upgrades to the design of its flagship smartphone. The S6 was perhaps the first big departure in a long time as the company attempted to fight falling sales by moving away from the plastic casing it was known for, which was often criticized as "feeling cheap," and using metal instead to give the Galaxy phones a more premium look and feel.

The S7 also brought back some favorite features from the S5, including being water-resistant up to 1.5m for 30 minutes at a time and a support for microSD cards. Another interesting choice for the company is to change to a camera sensor with fewer megapixels—12MP instead of the 16MP camera in the S6. The camera has larger pixels that let in 56 percent more light, according to Samsung, which should result in better images in low-light settings.

However, there does not seem to be a lot to say about the S7. Most of the specifications are pretty standard in premium phones these days. It has a 2560x1440-pixel resolution and a 3,000mAh battery, and runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with 4GB of RAM. It is another great high-end smartphone, but that is to be expected from Samsung. Many smartphones are quite good these days, which is the challenge facing Samsung. Apple can dominate the high end of the market because no one else is making phones like theirs that can run its software. On the other hand, Android phones are everywhere and China manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OnePlus are selling smartphones at nearly a third of the price with similar capability. Samsung's biggest advantage right now, though, is that it still offers what is considered the very best in hardware in the Android handset market.

Water resistance and SD card support disappeared for the S6, possibly as a means of controlling costs. The features are now back which could mean the cost of including them has come down a little or that demand for them was big enough. It could be a little of both. SD card support never really went away in China smartphones, as it offers consumers an affordable way of adding on storage capacity. While water resistance is not as common, that might be changing. The biggest challenge for China smartphone makers might be to make water-resistant phones look slim andsleek. Many of these phones coming out of China today include bulky out-side casings, but at least the handset will be safe when a user drops it in the toilet.