As Apple and Samsung move to the next round in their long-running quest for world domination, scopes out their prospects for victory
Daanesh Kalyaniwalla
ast month Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7. Every year, the launch of this little category star brings a period of confusion for the consumer. There’s only one question on almost every potential customer’s mind: Should I buy the new Note or wait for the iPhone? We’ve scrutinised the specs and crunched the numbers. So here’s a little breakdown of what to expect.
First up, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Apart from being powerpacked on specifications, the device now comes with an iris scanner, an upgraded S Pen and is IP-68 water-resistant. The human iris is one of the most accurate biometrics and incorporating the scanner means security is superstrong. The nib on the upgraded S Pen is about 60 per cent smaller and recognises 4,096 points of pressure, so accuracy is increased whether you’re writing or drawing. Plus, if you hover the S Pen over a word, it can translate texts from multiple languages.
The phone has a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED curved display, either a Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890 chipset depending on the market, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, expandable memory of up to 256GB, a dualpixel 12MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, and 3,500mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow and an upgrade to Nougat as soon as the fourth quarter of this year is expected.
The device is already being touted as the smartphone of the year.
And then there is Apple. While no details are available — as always — the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are rumoured to have the nextgeneration A10 processors, 2GB of RAM on the 7 and 3GB on the 7 Plus, internal storage starting from 32GB up to 256GB, stereo speakers, no headphone jack, bespoke Apple waterproofing, a bigger 1,960mAh battery and will run iOS 10.
The screen size and resolution on both devices will remain the same but there is talk of them being slimmer and having redesigned subtle antenna lines. The rumours around the camera have been plenty, but the main one is that Apple is moving to a dual-camera set-up (Android HTC phones were there first), which will improve optical zoom and this explains the higher RAM.
So now we know what’s on offer (well... sort of) and the confusion begins. There are lots to consider before choosing between these two devices. Design is one of the first things you take into account when buying a phone and while Apple has always dominated form, Samsung’s all-new glass-metallic