Samsung Galaxy S7 Has Gaming Features Like Water-Cooling, Graphics Tweaking

Today at Samsung's briefing at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, the technology giant officially announced the latest entry in its flagship smartphone line, the Galaxy S7, and revealed it will have some gaming-specific features.

According to GameSpot sister site CNET, one of these features is a water cooling system.

"Obviously the scale is miniature compared to desktop water cooling, but the sealed copper cooling system will still do its best to shift excess heat away from the S7's processor when games push things to the phone's thermal limits," CNET reported.

The phone also includes support for the Vulkan API for developers, which should in time mean we'll get games that "look and play much better than almost anything you've seen on Android before."

There is also a new "No Alerts" mode that stops all notifications, while the Recent and Back keys can be locked so you don't accidentally press them during gameplay. Samsung is also apparently hoping to bring the "Let's Play" movement to mobile with the S7. The phone can not only record gameplay, but the front-facing camera can be used for commentating gameplay via a picture-in-picture mode.

Another gaming feature for the S7 is that, like some PC games, you can tweak settings to adjust performance to your liking.

"Finally, Samsung also offers the ability to tweak graphics performance between three settings so you can dial things back a little if you want to put battery life ahead of gameplay," CNET says. "The standard setting will run games at maximum resolution and at 60 frames per second. The 'low power' setting reduces frame rate to 30 frames and dials down the resolution somewhat, while 'extreme low power' sticks with 30 frames but drops the resolution again."

Head to CNET to get all the details.

Samsung also announced today that everyone who preorders a Galaxy S7 gets a free Samsung Gear VR headset and a bundle of six games. The device normally sells for $100. Preorders for the Galaxy S7 (and Galaxy S7 Edge, which also comes with a free Gear VR) open on February 23. Pricing for the new phone was not announced, but we'll have that information for you when it's available.

Below is a rundown of the Galaxy S7's notable features; head to CNET for a full hands-on preview.

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow software
• 5.1-inch screen with 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution
• Either 32 or 64GB of storage, depending on the region
• MicroSD card slot for extra storage up to 200GB
• 12-megapixel camera (get the story below)
• Water-resistant (IP68 rating)
• 3,000 mAh battery (versus 2,550 mAh on Galaxy S6)
• "Always-on" display shows time, calendar or images from the lock screen
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor (or Samsung's Exynos chipset in some regions)
• Dedicated gaming feature makes it easier to record sessions and screenshots; a do-not-disturb mode blocks incoming notifications
• Colors: black onyx, gold platinum