The Samsung Galaxy S7 has been part a lot of leaks and the frequency is increasing as we approach the announcement at MWC 2016 event. Earlier, a full fledged specs sheet showed remarkable increment in battery capacity (3000mAh) in the Galaxy S7 in comparison to the previous version, which was 2,550mAh. And now, a very knowledgeable source, Eldar Murtazin has bolstered this claim by confirming that the S7 is, indeed, quite durable.

We don't know how Mr. Murtazin accessed this information, but as per him the next Samsung flagship device can deliver over 17 hours of continuous video playback, at highest brightness.

There is a tiny disclaimer: this looks like 17 hours of video playback with Samsung's own methodology for testing smartphones. Previously the Galaxy S6 got the rating of 13 hours and the Galaxy Note 5 bagged 15 hours of video playback. Taking these into consideration, a claim of 17+ hours playback is not something out of the world, especially when the battery power has increased. Other elements like more efficient Super AMOLED display tech, home-grown Exynos 8000-series processor, improved RAM and further optimized TouchWiz under Android 6.0 Marshmallow have played their part in this.

This might sound quite authentic, but we must wait for sometime as the release in February at MWC 2016 is nearing.

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Samsung bagged the highest market share in the smartphone space by acquiring 21.4% worldwide last quarter, up by 1.4% from last year, as per recent data released by market research company IDC.

The South Korean giant sold 85.6 million smartphones in the last quarter of 2015, which is 10 million more than the number released last year in the same quarter. But Apple has managed to stick to the second spot by selling 74.8 million iPhones last quarter and acquiring 18.7% market share. Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi entered the league of top five makers with 8.1%, 5.1%, and 4.6% share, respectively.

In 2015, there was no overall change in the market share with Samsung retaining the top spot by shipping 325 million smartphones and Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi following to suite by shipping 231.5, 106.6, 74.0, and 70.8 million devices, respectively.

Among the top five manufacturers the Chinese firm Huawei achieved the highest year-on-year growth. "Usually the conversation in the smartphone market revolves around Samsung and Apple, but Huawei's strong showing for both the quarter and the year speak to how much it has grown as an international brand," stated Melissa Chau, who is a Senior Research Manager of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "While there is a lot of uncertainty around the economic slowdown in China, Huawei is one of the few brands from China that has successfully diversified worldwide, with almost half of its shipments going outside of China. Huawei is poised to be in a good position to hold onto a strong number 3 over the next year." In comparison to the total smartphones shipped worldwide, in 2015 10.1% increment was reported leading to shipment of 1.4 billion devices.

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If Evan Blass from @evleaks is to be believed, then we finally have two images that depict the upcoming Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. One cannot deny the fact that the images do look like they have been edited here and there. Nonetheless, we must admit that the "leaked" images look very realistic, even if they turn out to be just conceptualizations based on 2015's S6 series.

The first thing that catches the eye when looking at the two images is the dark themed wallpaper. The dark wallpaper looks classy and if we see this in the actual S7 instead of the usual bright wallpapers that Samsung uses with its devices, it would be a welcome change. Next, the home buttons on both the devices seem to be less rounded when compared to current gen smartphones in the series. Displays on both the phones show the date to be February 21, which is unofficially confirmed as the launch date for the Galaxy S7 line up.

If the images bear real similarities with the original S7, then it can be concluded that Samsung is sticking with more or less the same design as last year, but boosting the internals to keep up with the latest hardware and software changes. We have heard enough rumors to know that many fans are expecting the S7 to be water-resistant, and we think that the chances of that happening are not that bad either. Perhaps the two most missed features in the S6 were its mediocre battery life and exclusion of a microSD card slot. The S7 is rumoured to solve both the problems by adding an expansion slot and providing a larger battery. Hopefully, we will get more of our wishes fulfilled in less than a month from now.

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The much awaited Android M updates for some of last year's flagships are finally being rolled out by Samsung. As it turns out, Samsung's own nation of origin South Korea, is the first country to receive them. We already have an idea about what new features to expect and possible changes in the interface, thanks to the pre-release beta version of the firmware that was made available to users if they wanted to test it out.

It is only a matter of time before the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Note 5 are also updated, but at this moment, Android 6.0.1 is only available for the S6 and S6 Edge. No news has yet been revealed about when the updates will be made available in other regions. Even without an official confirmation, expect the updates to hit all markets very soon.

Amongst all the features and changes that we saw with the beta version of the Marshmallow update, some impressed us more than others. The newly added option to change shutter speeds is something that will be appreciated by photography enthusiasts while the redesigned power menu may not appeal to everyone. The ability to change and apply themes based on one's choice of color palettes is another useful and likable modification that we loved. There are plenty of other changes and additions but which ones will make it to the final stable version remains to be seen.

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Earlier, Evan Blass (@evleaks) had tweeted about how the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are going to be released on February 21 at the Samsung Unpacked 2016 and now we have more confirmation about the S7 Edge as it goes through Geekbench for a run. As evident in the screenshot, the SM-G935F model number confirms that this is the international Exynos 8890 version of the Galaxy S7 Edge that we are seeing here. The models released in USA and China will sport Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipsets instead of the Exynos 8890.

While the single-core score of 1363 and the multi-core score of 4951 are impressive, it is not in the same league as that of its Snapdragon 820 driven counterpart which scored 2456 and 5423 respectively for single-core and multi-core. If you are not reading this in the US or China, this might disappoint you a little, but we urge you not to invest too deeply into these results. While in their testing phase, all prototypes are made to run through different tests at different clock speeds. What this means is that the scores could very well be a result of underclocking.

As expected, the screenshot confirms that the Galaxy S7 will come with Android 6.0.1 out of the box and will be aided in its multitasking endeavours by 4GB of RAM. We will keep you posted with the latest updates and rumors as they happen.

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