Are you a Samsung loyalist feeling left out thanks to the iPhone’s latest addition of 3D Touch? Fear not, the upcoming model of the Samsung Galaxy will take some, uh, inspiration from its Cupertino, California, competitor and include a very similar feature.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Samsung will include a pressure-sensitive display on the Galaxy S7. The more responsive display will give the phone the ability to to sense different taps and touches depending on how the user presses on the screen.
If that sounds oddly similar to the 3D Touch feature applied by Apple to the iPhone 6S, well, it’s pretty much exactly that. Samsung and Apple have had a love-hate relationship when it comes to features, in that Samsung generally loves to snap up ideas central to Apple’s flagship smartphone despite Apple’s unrelenting hate for the practice. There’s even a Tumblr account dedicated to documenting Samsung’s tendencies to copy. It’s what has kept the companies in the courtroom, hashing out copyright infringements and payment plans that generally have directed large sums of money into Apple’s coffers.
Before Samsung embraced the pressure-sensitive screen, a hack applied to the Sony Xperia Z3 that tapped into the device’s built in barometer made it possible to replicate the 3D Touch effect on an Android device.
Set aside the apparent Apple inspiration, the Galaxy S7 is also said to include a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer, joining the fray of Huawei, LG, and others who have already embraced the input of the future. It promises to deliver a full charge in about 30 minutes.
Samsung will maintain the curved-screen version of the flagship phone with the Galaxy S7 Edge, though only the standard edition of the smartphone will have a port for additional memory via SD card.
The report also claimed that Samsung may include a retina scanner as an additional security measure on the device, as well as an improved camera that won’t bulge out of the handset like it does on the Galaxy S6 or the iPhone. For the most part, though, the flagship phone is expected to be similar to its predecessors.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 will be on store shelves in the U.S. come mid-March, with an announcement expected to come during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.
H/T Wall Street Journal | Photo via K?rlis Dambr?ns/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
