The Samsung Galaxy S7 is finally official and some of the rumours were proven to be true but there were still some surprises.

The flasgship phone in Samsung’s Galaxy S line was launched on February 21st with pre-orders available as of tomorrow with a release date of March 11th.

The design of the Galaxy S7 looks pretty much like that of the Galaxy S6 – or so you’d think when you first see it.

The phone, from the front, does have a very similar look, with the metal edges and rounded corners but there’s a few new tweaks that could make the difference and, yes, it does have an microSD Card slot!

Samsung Galaxy S7 display

Samsung’s stuck with the same 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display on the Galaxy S7 as on the S6. It’s usually a bad thing when a brand doesn’t add anything to the mix for its phone from one year to the next (~cough~ Apple ~cough~) but Sammy’s screen is pretty darned good.

Super AMOLED tech means you’re already getting great colour reproduction and brilliant differences between the light and dark elements of the screen – and the results always seem to impress friends in the pub, so all’s good there.

The S7 Edge has received a more thorough update: it’s been given a larger, 5.5-inch display – it’s still quad HD Super AMOLED and curved on both sides though. The back of the device also has a slight curve to it now, so this should make it much more comfortable to hold than last year’s phone.

It seems that Samsung has joined LG with the Always On Display card. You can pretty much guess what this is from the name: when the phone is in standby it’ll either show a clock, your calendar or some weird pattern.

Samsung Galaxy S7 storage

Both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge support microSD cards. Yes!

This allows you to once more boost their 32GB of internal storage (Samsung says a 64GB model will be available in some regions, but the US will just have the 32GB), as well as IP68 water and dust resistance. That means you can submerse your new mobile in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes at a time. The S7’s waterproofing includes sealed ports, so there are no fussy port covers over the USB ports or headphone jacks.

The S7 still shuns USB Type-C, and sticks with the traditional Micro USB port. Samsung says this is because Micro USB retains compatibility with the Gear VR headset released last year, and that USB C isn’t quite ready for the mainstream just yet.

Samsung Galaxy S7 chips

Under the hood the S7 line is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor in North America, a departure from Samsung’s own Exynos chips that were in the S6. (Samsung is still using Exynos processors in the S7 for other regions of the world.) The RAM has been stepped up to 4GB this time around.

This should make the handset faster than before and capable of supporting the Vulkan API (application program interface). Samsung says support for the Vulkan AI should reduce the toll complex games take on battery life. This is an open standard that lets games make more efficient use of a chip’s graphics processing units (GPUs). Modern PCs and games consoles can already support Vulkan, but Samsung says its smartphones are the first to do so.

Samsung has also slipped in a “thermal spreader” to the phone’s innards. This is a 0.4mm-thick tube of water that turns to steam, cooling down the processor, when required. This should allow the handset to better handle graphics-intensive titles without overheating. In addition, Samsung has made it easier to record gameplay for later playback.

The Galaxy S7 is one of the first Samsung phones to jump to Android 6, which comes pre-installed on the handset and will be coated in Samsung’s TouchWiz interface.

One thing that has remained, however, are non-removable batteries.

Samsung Galaxy S7 camera

The S7’s new 12-megapixel camera is lower resolution than last year’s 16-megapixel shooter, but Samsung says its larger pixels will let in 56% more light than before for better low-light images.

The camera’s lens is a brighter f/1.7 aperture, allowing in 25% more light. Combined, the new sensor and lens let in 95% more light than last year’s camera which people seemed to like. The sensor’s shape has also changed from a wide-format 16:9 to a more traditional 4:3 ratio.

Samsung says the new camera can focus up to three times faster thanks to its dual-pixel system that allows every single one of the 12 million pixels to act as focus pixels, similar to the system Canon uses in some of its DSLR cameras

Samsung Galaxy S7 price

In the UK, the Samsung Galaxy S7 SIM-free price is £569. Carriers defray this through monthly fees, so EE is asking for £44.49 a month with just £49.99 up front, while Three wants £35 a month with £99 up front. Vodafone has it at £44 per month with £29 up front for the Red Value Bundle that includes the £79.99 Gear VR and 10GB data. The Edge adds £6 per month but the same up front cost of £29 at Vodafone.