Samsung today announced their next generation of Galaxy S smartphones, the S7 and S7 Edge. The company says Gear VR will be included for free with pre-orders.
On stage at Samsung’s Unpacked event in Barcelona today, the company revealed the anticipated S7 and S7 Edge smartphones, each of which will be compatible with the latest version of Gear VR which was released late last year.
Aside from the usual improvements in performance, battery life, camera, etc. both phones now include a MicroSD card slot which will be a boon for those downloading loads of VR apps and 360 videos. With no mention of resolution during the announcement, we’re left to believe that the phone’s retain the same 2560×1440 displays as their predecessors.
Both devices include the recently released Vulkan graphics API. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney joined Samsung’s stage to say that Vulkan increases rendering speed by four times compared to OpenGL, and he showed off an impressive real-time graphics demo running on Epic’s Unreal Engine 4.
Pre-orders for the S7 and S7 Edge start on February 23rd and through March 18, pre-orderees will get a free Gear VR headset and a bundle including six VR games. Samsung limits the number of units given away to some undefined “while supplies last” clause, but hopefully it’s more than a few thousand.