Samsung Electronics has unveiled its new phablet, Galaxy Note 7, a curved-edge smartphone that comes equipped with a stylus, is fully water-resistant and boasts of an iris scanner, to the media in Seoul.
The smartphone will hit the stores in the United States and South Korea on August 19, after which it will be available to buy in other countries till September, a company representative said.
The phone is priced at around $900, although it may vary from one market to another, he added.
Available in four colours - black, golden, silver and metallic light blue - the phone has a 5.7 inch screen, 12 and 5 megapixel cameras, as well as an S-Pen stylus.
Measuring 153.50 x 73.90 x 7.90mm, and weighing 345 grams, the Note 7 can be charged wirelessly, although its 3500mAh battery is not removable as in the case of an earlier version, the Galaxy S7 that was launched in February.
At the presentation, the company also demonstrated the new phone's complete resistance to water, making it suitable for use in the shower and even while shallow-diving.
"All features of the phone can be used under water, from sending messages to writing notes using the stylus," a public relations official of the firm told EFE.
The latest offering from Samsung can also scan the owner's iris, allowing it to block the phone or certain functions "faster than the fingerprint-identifying feature," she added.
The phone is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor in the US and the octa-core Exynos 8890 in the rest of the world, has a 4 GB RAM and can store up to 32 GB of data, expandable up to 256 GB with a Micro SD card.
