Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge unveiled – in pictures

With earnings sliding in a stalling smartphone market and the shares battered by three straight annual declines, South Korea’s biggest company needs a hit product after the S6 failed to set the records that had been predicted. AP Photo / Manu Fernadez

President of Mobile Communications Business of Samsung DJ Koh with the S7 and S7 edge. The S7 is now water and dust proof to IP68 level. The screen resolution of 1,440 x 2,560 is the same as the S6. AP Photo / Manu Fernadez

Samsung also showed off virtual reality hardware alongside its latest Galaxy S7 smartphones. This year’s models hit the market about a month earlier than the S6 did in 2015. While wireless carriers will decide on prices and calling plans, the S7s will probably be at a similar price level to last year’s device, according to Drew Blackard, director of product marketing at Samsung. Some operators could include a free Gear VR headset with the S7, the company said without elaborating. The Gear 360 camera features two back-to-back fisheye lenses that each can capture a 180-degree image and stream it to the S7, earlier S6 models and the Note 5. David Ramos / Getty Images

Visitors test out the VR headsets which connect to the S7. David Ramos / Getty Images

The new camera has a reduced resolution of 12 megapixels - the S6 has 16 megapixels - and larger, 1.4um pixels (the S6's were 1.16um in size), in a bid to improve performance in low light. David Ramos / Getty Images

DJ Koh, president of Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics, right, shakes hands with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2016 event on the eve of this week’s Mobile World Congress wireless show, in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday, February 21, 2016. Zuckerberg was there to announce a partnership with the South Korean firm to promote the use of virtual reality on the social network. "We want to make Facebook the best video platform for virtual reality and Samsung is the only company in the world that can provide a good experience in terms of virtual reality," he said. AP Photo / Manu Fernadez

Samsung says it will have no supply issues with the curved-screen model this year and re-introduced microSD cards for boosting storage capacity, addressing a common complaint among customers as part of a list of upgrades. But the Galaxy S7 models lack any features or offerings that are fundamentally new or different from that of their predecessors. EPA

Samsung showed off virtual reality hardware alongside its latest Galaxy S7 smartphones at the Mobile World Congress, in its latest attempt to breathe life into its premium line and wrest ascendancy back from Apple.