Samsung has recently released the Galaxy S7 and it’s now available for sale in the U.S., Europe and other parts of the world.
A first glance at this device will tell you a lot about this it; however, you must first of all shell out $699 to lay your hands on the Galaxy S7.
Surprisingly, Samsung only spent about $255 to bring together this amazing device, according to IHS Technology research firm. Interestingly, this is about the same amount that was used by the company to bring together the older Samsung Galaxy S5, but this 2014 flagship was unveiled with a market price of just $660.
The major reason as to why this price has stagnated is because Samsung employed the same approach in the production of the Galaxy S7 as it did with its previous models. The internal parts have been incrementally improved over what was used on the Galaxy S6. According to the IHS report, the most expensive costly component of the Samsung Galaxy S7 is the new chipset from Qualcomm – Snapdragon 820, which the report estimates to cost $62. The twisted part of the story is that Samsung is still the maker of this chipset, as reported earlier this year by the Verge.
As you can see, Qualcomm’s chipset accounts for about one-quarter of the total cost of manufacturing a Galaxy S7. This is good news for the American chip maker given that it missed out on the same deal last year with its Snapdragon 810, which was overlooked by Samsung for its own Exynos 7.
As far as the camera is concerned, Samsung dropped the 16MP lens used in the Galaxy S6 in favor of a smaller 12MP lens. According to market analysts, the company finally saw the need to cut on their focus on inflating the number of megapixels and instead come in with camera technology that delivers much better end results in general. The new dual-pixel technology used in the S7 means that each pixel has its own automatic focusing capabilities thus speeding up the entire focusing process. The new lens also takes better pictures in poor lighting conditions. Unlike the chipset, the camera used only cost about $13.70.
The IHS report, however, does not include things like marketing, shipping, warehousing, and labor costs. Furthermore, it only breaks down the cost of making the U.S.-bound Samsung Galaxy S7. When compared to the cost of making an iPhone 6S Plus, which is $236, the Galaxy S7’s manufacturing price is still higher, although the latter’s retail price is much lower than the former’s, which is about $749.