Samsung pushed the launch date of its current batch of flagship handsets - the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5 - up by several weeks in an effort to beat Apple's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to market. It would appear as though the South Korean electronics giant plans to execute a similar strategy in launching the Galaxy S7.
AT&T, the nation's second largest wireless provider, is already testing two variants of Samsung's Galaxy S7 according to tech industry leaker extraordinaire Evan Blass. The admission adds credibility to earlier rumors suggesting Samsung may launch the handset as early as January.
Samsung traditionally unveils its new Galaxy SX smartphones at Mobile World Congress in late February / early March. A trade show of that magnitude seems like the perfect place to unveil new products but in actuality, it's a bit of a double-edged sword as it's somewhat easy to get lost in the flood of announcements from other exhibitors.
In addition to the standard Galaxy S7 and an Edge variety, we're also hearing that Samsung may launch a "premium edition" S7. This model is rumored to feature a 4K display, a dual-lens rear camera from Sony and a special version of the octa-core Exynos 8890 SoC that's said to utilize a Mali-T880 GPU with 14 cores (up from 12 cores in the "standard" edition).
It's worth pointing out that the Exynos 8890 will power the Galaxy S7 models in all markets expect China and the US where the handsets will instead use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoC.