Samsung was right from the start: bigger is better. And the company's newest flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7, is its best phablet yet.
The rumors nailed almost everything about the Note 7, including its name. As expected, Samsung is skipping the Note 6 name to keep the branding in line with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. And technically speaking, the Note 7 is the seventh-generation Galaxy Note if you count the Note Edge, which was released alongside the Note 4.
Samsung isn't reinventing the wheel with the Note 7, but that's fine because the Note 5 didn't really need much fixing to begin with.
It's difficult to express just how sleek the Note 7 is. Photos just don't do it justice. Samsung says it focused on improving the entire user experience -- hardware and software -- by getting feedback from real Note users, and I have to say it shows.
The result is the Note 7's symmetrical design. The glass display and glass backside now curve into the metal frame on both sides. That's right, the Note 7 has the S7 Edge's dual curved edges and all of the convenient shortcuts they come with.
The phone will be available in four colors: black onyx, silver titanium, gold platinum and a new blue coral, which Samsung hopes will become the next trendy color. There's no rose gold or "pink gold" as Samsung would call it.
Even though blue coral isn't my style, it's still attractive, and under the right light, the frame has a pinkish tint to it. My favorite is the black onyx, which is basically a deep black just like the Batman S7 Edge edition minus the gold trims.
The Note 7 launches on Aug. 19 in the U.S. and pre-orders start on Aug. 3. Pricing is TBA. U.S. customers will also get a freebie gift with their Note 7 purchase: either a Gear Fit 2 or a 256GB microSD card.
The 5.7-inch Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440) resolution Super AMOLED display with 518 ppi is as jaw-dropping as on Samsung's other flagship phones.
Under the glass is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, a microSD slot that takes memory cards up to 256GB and a 3,500 mAh battery. And of course it's got NFC and supports Samsung Pay.
The Note 7 is IP68 water and dust resistant, just like the S7 and S7 Edge. And for the first time, the S Pen stylus is IP68-rated as well, which means you can write on the screen while both are submerged under water. It's insane!
And speaking of the S Pen, you won't be able to break your Note 7 by inserting it in wrong.
Samsung's best-in-class cameras from the S7 and S7 Edge also made the leap to the Note 7: a 12-megapixel f/1.7 back camera with "Dual Pixel" autofocus and dual-LED flash, and 5-megapixel f/1.7 on the front.
The biggest physical hardware change is the switch from a Micro USB port to a USB Type-C port. There's still fast charging and fast wireless charging as well.
Unlock with your eyes
Security is at the top of everyone's mind these days and Samsung is taking it to another level.
In addition to its Knox mobile enterprise security software and the fingerprint sensor embedded into the home button, the Note 7 has the world's first iris scanning sensor.
The sensor is located on the far left side of the top bezel and shoots out a beam of infrared light to detect and authenticate your iris. Samsung says it's impossible for the sensor to be fooled by high-resolution images of your iris simply because it wouldn't have the same infrared signature.
After much prodding, Samsung finally let me "program" my own eyes into a pre-production Note 7 and give it a spin. Samsung says the Note 7 can only recognize one pair of irises.
The iris scanner is fast to detect and unlock your phone, but activating it is a little cumbersome. You need to first turn on the display by either pressing the home button or power button, swipe up to bring up the lock screen, which has a portion at the top for the iris scanner, and then hold the phone about 10 inches away from your eyes.
The process is not as fast and seamless as just using the fingerprint sensor, but if you want that extra level of security, it's there.
Samsung told me it intentionally didn't make the feature "unlock at a glance" because it would interfere with the always-on display.
There's also another use for the iris security: secure folders. These are special folders where you can store files that can only be unlocked with your iris scan. Samsung says you can also run separate accounts for an app locked within these folders. All files stored in secure folders are also stored on a separate partition of the Note 7's storage for additional security.
New Note tricks
It was rumored Samsung would revamp TouchWiz for Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The Note 7's UI is indeed a little more streamlined and easier on the eyes, but it's still more or less the same TouchWiz from the S7 and S7 Edge. No sweeping changes here.
Notable software tweaks include the camera app, which now supports various gestures. Swipe up or down to flip between the front and back camera; swipe in from the left to access camera settings and modes; and swipe in from the right to bring up filters.
Furthermore, Samsung's cleaned up the clutter by consolidating four apps (Action memo, Memo, Scrapbook and S Note) into a single "Samsung Notes" app.
As I mentioned earlier, the Note 7 supports all of the wonderful Edge functions that slide out from a panel on the curved edge.
Like every new Note, there are new features. The awesome "screen off memo" from the Note 5, which lets you jot things down on the black screen as soon as the S Pen is pulled out, now supports pinning. So you can pin a quick note (like a to-do list or a shopping list or a cute person's phone number) to the Always-On Display.
Then there are the new Air Command features, like a translation feature that can translate words in more than 30 languages when you hover over them with the S Pen. A new Magnify feature can enlarge any section of the screen by up to 300x that the S Pen is hovering over.
The coolest of them all, however, might be Smart Select, which makes it easy to make GIFs out of videos. It works like GifGrabber, but unlike that desktop app, you can add doodles and stickers and text on top of your custom GIFs before sharing them out to the world.
I only had a short time to play with the Note 7, but I was impressed nonetheless.
It is possibly one of the nicest smartphones -- phablet or not -- that I've ever held in my hand. The cutting-edge features are all there and the S Pen is more useful than ever before.
I wasn't entirely sold on the iris scanner, but I'll have to spend more time with it when I review the phone to make any calls on it.
The blue coral may be the model that will be plastered all over ads and commercials, but that black onyx has me drooling.
