Now that the Blue Coral color option has become available for the Galaxy S7 Edge across all carriers in the US and a lot of the off-shore markets, it looks like Samsung is about to launch another color option for the S7 Edge. This time, it's Glossy Black, as made apparent by the leaked pictures which you see. One cannot help but be reminded of the Jet Black Apple iPhone 7 by looking at them though.

Samsung is definitely hoping that more color options will help the company make up for the fact that they do not have a new handset in the holiday market to compete against the likes of the Pixel phones, the LG V20 or even the iPhone 7. Although the S7 and S7 Edge were released this year only, more powerful phones have since been launched by all the major competitors. Samsung of course, did launch the Galaxy Note 7 at the right time too, but was unfortunately forced to take its stylus-touting handset off the market due to multiple and repeating safety issues.

If you are concerned about the authenticity of the images, rest assured that these pictures are 100% reliable as they were posted on the Chinese social networking website Weibo by a Samsung representative himself.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

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As you probably know already, the next Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chipset has been made official jointly by Samsung and Qualcomm at a press event two days ago. The Snapdragon 835 chip marks Qualcomm's shift from the older 14nm process to the new 10nm FinFET process by Samsung, who will also be manufacturing all of the chips for Qualcomm in 2017.

According to a recently leaked spec sheet online, the MSM8998, aka the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC will be powered by an octa-core processor and the Adreno 540 GPU based on the company's own 64-bit Kryo 200 architecture. Support will be added for 4-channel LPDDR4X-1866 RAM and UFS 2.1 for internal storage. The 835 chip will also be compatible with LTE X16 modems with up to 1Gbps speed on LTE Cat.16.

Interestingly, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC also came into focus via the same leak and was revealed to be an octa-core CPU as well. Instead of the Adreno 540 GPU, the 660 will be powered by a less powerful Adreno 512, but the sheet promisingly shows that the mid-range CPU is capable of being clocked as high as 2.2GHz. Unlike its more premium sibling, the SD 660 will be built on the 14nm FinFET LPP process by Samsung. It will support the X10 LTE modem, UFS 2.1 for internal storage and 2-channel LPDDR4X-1866 RAM.

As far as release dates are concerned, it looks like the Snapdragon 835 will make an early debut in the first quarter of 2017, while the Snapdragon 660 will be released later in Q2, 2017.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

According to a survey conducted by Reuters/Ipsos in all 50 states of the US, the reputation of Samsung as a brand is almost totally intact in the country. It was found that about 27% of the people, who knew about the Note 7’s first and second recall, would still give Samsung devices a fair chance while selecting their next smartphone. Interestingly, it was found that 25% of the people who did not know anything about the issues with the Note 7 would also give Samsung smartphones a chance while picking out their next device. The higher percentages of people who are open towards Samsung devices seem to belong to the group which actually know about Samsung’s embarrassing episode. This clearly shows how unaffected Samsung’s reputation is in the United States.

A more overwhelming response was recorded when 91% of the polled people who are Samsung smartphones users at the moment, voted that they would buy a Samsung again. In fact, according to the final results published by the survey, of all the people who were included in the survey, 92% are very much open to buying a Samsung device.

The following reasons were cited as being behind such a convincing and positive response from the customers in the US by Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.

1. An early and timely recall.

2. A very limited number of seriously harmful incidents.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

The Galaxy J3 (2017) is going to make its appearance anytime now and rumor has it that it's going to be announced on December 1. However, even if it is announced somewhere around that date, the J3 (2017) will probably not go on sale till January next year. The good news is that we already have a pretty good idea about the low range smartphone, thanks to multiple leaks, rumors and a recent tweet by Evan Blass from @evleaks, revealing press renders.

Display: 5-inch 720p/1080p Super AMOLED panel
SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (1.4GHz octa-core A53 processor with Adreno 505 GPU)
RAM: 2GB/3GB
Camera: 8-mp rear sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 5-mp front camera
Storage: 16GB/32GB internal with micro-SD card slot for cards up to 256GB
Battery: 2,600mAh removable
Android version: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
Colors: White, Gold and Black

After looking at the renders, the only significant change from the J3 (2016) that we picked up on is that the phone now seems a lot more rounded, especially around the corners.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

By now, the entire world knows about the Note 7's safety failure and even then, quite a number of the customers who had bought the phone are refusing to give it up. While Samsung and the carriers are trying to persuade everyone to exchange the potentially explosive Note 7, a few new reports have also emerged from different sections of the globe that even some of the phones in the S7-series are catching fire spontaneously. As these reports have given rise to confusion and fear among its customer base, Samsung has decided to come out with a statement which officially establishes the S7-lineup as completely safe to use under normal conditions.

"Samsung stands behind the quality and safety of the Galaxy S7 family. There have been no confirmed cases of internal battery failures with these devices among the more than 10 million devices being used by consumers in the United States; however, we have confirmed a number of instances caused by severe external damage. Until Samsung is able to obtain and examine any device, it is impossible to determine the true cause of any incident."

If you are planning to buy a smartphone this holiday season, will you be opting for a Samsung?

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)