Project Lucky: Samsung Galaxy S7 details start to leak

Timing is everything.

Apple unveiled the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus yesterday. Today, the first details of the Samsung Galaxy S7 have leaked.

The early leak comes courtesy of SamMobile, which refers to a Samsung smartphone called “Lucky-LTE” that recently appeared on the Geekbench benchmark database. The report claims that this device is the Galaxy S7, which Samsung has codenamed Project Lucky internally (likely because many consider seven to be a lucky number).

While that’s easy to believe, it’s very possible that the specifications may still change. After all, the Galaxy S7 will likely be released in April 2016, if history repeats itself.

With that said, here are the supposed specs:

• Exynos 8890 chipset, possibly at 2.3GHz, with the Snapdragon 820 powering some variants
• UFS 2.0 storage, which may or may not end up working with SD cards
• 20-megapixel ISOCELL camera, along with a project called “all lens cover,” though no details around that

The most interesting part of the report is the second point:

Our insiders tell us that the Galaxy S7 is being tested with Samsung’s screaming fast UFS 2.0 storage, but the company might have found a way to make it work with SD cards. As we explained earlier this year, the memory controller on SD cards and the UFS 2.0 storage aren’t compatible with each other, making it impossible for them to co-exist on the same device. Samsung probably is trying out interfacing techniques to get around the limitation, though it would be best to not get too hopeful that the final product will bring back expandable storage to Samsung’s flagship line.

Many Samsung fans were disappointed to learn that the Galaxy S6 doesn’t have a microSD slot, so it’s not out of the question for the South Korean company to consider bringing it back in next year’s model.