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Samsung reportedly testing Live Photos feature for Galaxy S7

Samsung is reportedly testing out a new Live Photos feature for the forthcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone.

We’re expecting to hear a lot more about the Samsung Galaxy S7 over the coming weeks, ahead of a likely official announcement at MWC in late February.

One fresh rumour suggests that Samsung is looking to emulate Apple’s Live Photos feature, as introduced in the iPhone 6S back in September.

Live Photos, in case you missed it, is feature whereby brief three-second video snippets are automatically captured when you lift your phone to take a picture. The idea is that each snap gets a brief animation to flesh out the moment, and these can then be shared.

According to Android Geeks‘s sources, Samsung has taken note. Apparently, the South Korean manufacturer is in the process of testing a Live Photos-like feature for the Galaxy S7.

If you’re thinking this is a little late in the day to be adding new features to a phone that’s probably only a month away from being unveiled, then you’re probably right. This Live Photos feature may not be ready for the launch of the Galaxy S7, and could arrive later in the year as a software update.

It seems Samsung is undecided on a name for this new feature, but ‘Timeless Photo’ and ‘Vivid Photo’ are apparently being bandied about.

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One notable difference between Samsung’s and Apple’s realisation of the concept is sound. It’s claimed that Samsung’s feature won’t record any audio.

While this sounds like a bit of a downer, it will have the benefit of enabling the video snippets to be shared directly to Facebook as GIFs. Samsung won’t require Facebook to specially intervene in order to integrate the feature, as Apple did with its Live Photos.

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