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Like Microsoft before it, Samsung's marketing department has had a bit of trouble counting this year. After the Galaxy Note 5 in 2015, the company has totally skipped the Galaxy Note 6 and advanced to the Galaxy Note 7. The idea is that the Galaxy Note line will now line up with the Galaxy S line—this year we're getting the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7. (A word of warning for next year: don't confuse the Galaxy Note 8 with the Galaxy Note 8.0, a Samsung tablet from 2013.)

This doubles as likely the best way to think of the Galaxy Note 7: it's a Galaxy S7, but a bit bigger. The design and materials are very close to the S7—the Note 7 is a glass-backed device with a metal frame, sporting the typical Samsung look. The specs are about the same, too, with a Snapdragon 820 (not the new 821), 4GB of RAM, and a 5.7-inch 2560x1440 AMOLED display. The Snapdragon is for the US market. Internationally, Samsung is again using an Exynos chip.

Sticking with 4GB of RAM is a little surprising given that the $400 OnePlus 3 is sporting a whopping 6GB of RAM. Samsung isn't talking pricing for the Note line, but AT&T has the devices listed for $880. Paying a premium should guarantee you the highest specs out there, but that's apparently not the case for the Note line this year. One upgrade over the S7 is Gorilla Glass 5, which Corning claims will survive a shoulder-height drop 80 percent of the time.

The Galaxy Note 7 is inheriting the S7's "Edge" design, where the vertical edges of the screen curve down slightly. This year the curve is more subtile than ever—we guess that too sharp of a curve would crowd out space for the S-Pen, which still gets stored inside the phone on the very edge. Like the Note 5, the back is also curved, making it a littler easier to wrap your fingers around the large device. The front and back curves are actually symmetrical now, and while we're not sure if this is the reason, the Note 7 feels great to hold. Unlike the Galaxy S7, Samsung is seems committed to the "Edge" variant on the Note 7. There is no flat version.

The new device will also ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow since Android 7.0 Nougat isn't quite ready yet. There's a 3500mAh non-replaceable battery, 64GB of storage is standard, and we haven't heard of any higher storage SKUs. Storage junkies will at least be happy with the microSD slot. The battery is a little slim—the 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge was a smaller phone with a bigger 3600mAh battery. We guess the Note is losing some juice thanks to the S-Pen storage.

The back has a 12MP camera with dual LED flash, which Samsung says is the same sensor as the Galaxy S7. Samsung is still sticking with that fingertip heart rate sensor, which sits just below the LED. On the front is a 5MP camera. Samsung Pay is back, too, as is the IP68 water resistance.

This year's headline grabbing feature is an iris scanner, which has been incorporated into the front of the device. The iris scanner adds a big infrared LED to the front and a second front facing camera that is separate from the selfie-cam. The LED shoots infrared light into your eye, which the camera uses to read the patterns in your iris. The iris scanner seems like something out of science fiction, and Samsung's software fully plays up this fact with several eyeball overlays. One looks like it's inspired by Minority Report, and the other looks like a pair of Dragon Ball Z scouters.

The iris scanner sticks very closely to the format of that other biometric security feature: a fingerprint scanner. You train it for your eyeball, and you can then use it as a secondary lock screen password, a payment authenticator, or for Samsung's new password-protected app feature.

While we only got to try it once or twice, it seemed very fast. It also didn't seem to offer any benefits over a fingerprint scanner. If anything, iris scanning was slower than a fingerprint scanner since you have to turn on the phone, swipe up on the screen, and aim it at your eye. The recognition was near-instant, but getting to that point is slower than the press-and-hold technique of a fingerprint scanner. A fingerprint scanner can also be triggered from a pocket without looking and doesn't have to be "aimed" at anything in particular.

The Note 7 continues the spring-loaded auto-ejecting S-Pen design that debuted on the Galaxy Note 5—just press it in and it will spring out. The Galaxy Note 5 got in a bit of hot water last year after users found out that the S-Pen could be put in backwards, where it would get stuck in the device. This year you can still put the pen in backwards, but it only seems to go in about half an inch. The pen didn't get stuck.

On the software side of things, Samsung's myriad of S-Pen apps have been merged into a single "Samsung Notes" app, where you can take notes or draw. TouchWiz has been given yet another coat of paint, but it doesn't look like too much of a departure from past versions. One new feature is a F.lux-style night mode that turns the screen yellow when it's dark out. Some people find this easier to read at night.

The new Gear VR











With the Galaxy S7, Samsung was the last major flagship to stick with a MicroUSB port. And with the Note 7, the company is finally upgrading to the reversible USB Type-C port, which is a nice improvement. The reason for Samsung's Type-C holdout was that changing the port would mean breaking compatibility with the Gear VR, Samsung's smartphone-powered VR headset. So with the change to Type-C comes a new Gear VR with a Type C port. This new Gear VR isn't just for Type-C devices though, an adapter will let it work with MicroUSB devices as well.

The new Gear VR—which Samsung again co-developed with Oculus—now has a 101 degree field of view. This is a small upgrade from the 96 degree FoV in the previous version, but it still isn't on par with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Like the second Gear VR, the new version has a single strap that goes around the back of the head.

This year Samsung finds itself in the middle of a bit of an ecosystem turf war. The Gear VR was co-developed with Oculus, so of course it has the Oculus Store for VR content. But this is also an Android device, and this year Google announced its own VR platform called " Daydream ." Daydream was mostly about democratizing and open sourcing a lot of the same techniques Samsung and Oculus implemented on the Gear VR. Samsung is still sticking with Oculus, but it isn't against having a Daydream compatible device. The company told us Google's specs just aren't ready yet.

The Galaxy Note 7 comes in black, silver, gold and blue, and it should start shipping August 19. Preorders from the carriers should start any day (any minute?) now.