Promised Samsung Galaxy S7 renders finally arrive – is this what we’ve been waiting for?

At this point we’ve heard a ton about what to expect from the Galaxy S7, and we’re looking forward to a launch just a few more weeks away. But what’s proved impressively (to Samsung’s credit) difficult to come by has been imagery of the actual hardware. At least, early renders made a few attempts, and we checked out a shot earlier this week that might be the real deal (if it weren’t so obscured by a testing rig), but a really convincing, fully revealing shot of the phone remianed elusive. Earlier this week, leak superstar Evan Blass teased us on social media with some promises of HQ Galaxy S7 imagery, and this afternoon he finally delivers, publishing the shots you see here of a smaller 5.1-inch Galaxy S7, and the larger 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge.

If you were hoping for a pronounced departure from Samsung’s Galaxy S6 designs, we’ve got bad news for you, because these aren’t them. Well, not from this angle, at least. We’ve already heard that Samsung may have solved the “problem” of last year’s camera hump, but there’s no verification of that change visible from the angle of these new pics.

To be fair, did Samsung’s flagship really need a from-the-ground-up redesign? The majority of changes we’ve been hearing about seem like stuff going on under the hood (in the form of new next-gen SoCs and bigger batteries) or tucked away through a side port (like the return of microSD expansion).

Taking all that into consideration, maybe it’s not that surprising that what we end up with might be a GS7 that really does look like a re-hash of last year’s design.