Samsung Galaxy Note 7 price, release date in Australia: Samsung pioneers iris scanning on smartphones

Aussies will get ahold of the Samsung' best phone to date – the Galaxy Note 7 – starting Aug. 19. For the price of $1,349, buyers will experience the latest in smartphone technology, including an infrared iris scanner for extra biometric security.

Samsung’s iris recognition technology uses a dedicated camera and LED light to scan and recognise the unique pattern of the user’s iris for a foolproof way to identify the smartphone owner.

“Keeping your information private and protected has always been a top concern,” said Samsung, the South Korean tech company that registered US$177 billion (AU$233 billion) revenue in 2016, according to Forbes magazine.

“So we developed one of the most foolproof ways to keep that information accessible only to you—iris scanning. Not only is it one of the safest ways to keep the Galaxy Note7 and the data it holds safe from prying eyes, it's also one of the most convenient.”

Interested buyers can pre-order Galaxy Note 7 between Aug. 5 to 18 from Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, JB Hi Fi, Harvey Norman, Samsung Retail and Samsung,com.au. Every pre-ordered unit in Australia will receive a free Samsung Evo Plus 256GB microSD card to expand the handset’s 64GB internal storage.

“When you're constantly connected to your phone making transitions between work and play, you need a phone that's big enough to deal with it all. So we designed the Galaxy Note7 to think as big as you do. For you to get the most out of life the way you choose,” Samsung said.

Water-, scratch- and shatter-resistant

Galaxy Note 7 rocks a dual-curved screen and a rounded back on a water-resistant body. While Samsung produced Note 7 in four colour variants, only three will be available for launch in Australia – Dark Onyx Black, Chrome Silver Titanium and Shiny Gold Platinum. There is no news yet if the Blue Coral variant will eventually be available to consumers.

Aside from bragging a gigantic 320GB storage space, a 3500mAh battery and S Pen stylus, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 also boasts of being the first smartphone with scratch and shatter-resistant Gorilla Glass 5.

Similar to Samsung Note5 and S6 Edge+, Galaxy Note 7 is built on a 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display. It also uses Exynos 8890 octa-core processor, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 12-megapixel f/1.7 dual-pixel rear camera and 5-megapixel front camera. Note 7 runs on 6.0.1 Marshmallow version of Android and is also water-resistant similar to its latest predecessors.