The excitement of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is still high as countries and carriers wait for its arrival. It was less than a week ago that it was reported that Samsung Canada announced the Galaxy Note 7 would arrive in Canada on August 19 and cost CAD $549.99 on a two-year term or a whopping $1049.50 outright. There should be a choice of Blue Coral, Silver Titanium, and Black Onyx and with the device available at the Samsung Experience Stores and at least on Telus, Bell, and Koodo, so all colors or options should be accessible – but wait, there is an even bigger announcement.
It looks like Samsung will use Qualcomm’s 64-bit Snapdragon 820 in the Canadian variant of the Galaxy Note 7, rather than the Exynos 8890. This switch would be the exact opposite of how Samsung handled the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, which both came packing the 64-bit Exynos 8890 octa-core processor with a quad-core clocked at 1.6GHz and a quad-core clocked at 2.3GHz. They also used a Mali-T880 MP12 GPU for the graphics processing. In the past, only the US received the Snapdragon processors, but it looks like the Canadian Galaxy Note 7 will use the same 64-bit quad-core processor with dual-core running at 1.6GHz and a dual-core clocked at 2.15GHz. It will use the very popular Adreno 530 GPU to handle any graphics you can throw at it.
Why Samsung is doing this is unclear – but Samsung Canada did state that the Galaxy Note 7 devices going to Canada would be getting the Snapdragon 820. It might be to simplify shipments to North America, or it might be they want to make sure they have enough Exynos 8890 chips for the rest of the world. While most of Canada has switched to GSM, there are still a few CDMA networks in Canada.
The new Galaxy Note 7 is the best device Samsung has put out this year – it is basically a Galaxy S7 Edge stretched a little with its slightly larger 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display with dual curves (not as large as the S7 Edge), ‘always on’ display, and 515 pixels-per-inch (PPI.) The Galaxy Note 7 is also the first smartphone to use the new Gorilla Glass 5 as standard. In addition to the Snapdragon 820 CPU it will pack 4GB of DDR4 RAM and 64GB of the faster UFS 2.0 memory expandable via a microSD card. It uses the newer Type-C v3.1 reversible USB port for charging or data transfer. The Galaxy Note 7 will be the first commercially available smartphone with an iris scanner for added security, as well as a fingerprint sensor.