The Galaxy A7 went official earlier today as the, er, latest version of the Galaxy A7 in Samsung's mid-range smartphone lineup. Yes, the name's confusing, and we here at SamMobile think the new Galaxy A7 is a product of Samsung responding to the competition that it has been facing from Chinese companies like Huawei. Its specs are fairly impressive overall, but there's a problem with the Galaxy A7, one that we noticed with devices like the Galaxy A6 as well: Samsung seems less keen on implementing MST technology on its devices these days.
Samsung Pay without MST is like an OLED display without vivid colors
The Galaxy A6, Galaxy A6 Plus, the new Galaxy A7, and even the Galaxy Watch don't have an MST chip. The Galaxy A7 and Galaxy Watch get support for Samsung Pay payments on NFC terminals, but Samsung Pay's biggest draw has been its ability to work with virtually any payment terminal or card machine in the world. It's especially important in growing markets like India, where NFC-enabled payment terminals are hard to come by. And even in other markets, it makes Samsung Pay far less useful if it only works over NFC.
Whether Samsung will be doing this over the long-term (not equipping any but the top mid-range and flagship devices with MST) or not remains to be seen. We certainly don't like it that you can't make MST payments over a device called the Galaxy A7 when the previous device of the same name could (or have no water resistance, as pointed out by one of our readers), and we'd like to know what you think about it.
Do you use Samsung Pay with standard payment terminals and card machines often and think MST support is important for Samsung Pay? Or do you think it's high time the world started moving towards NFC payment and that the lack of MST support on a Samsung device isn't that big a deal?
Let us know by voting in the poll below, then expand on your thoughts down in the comments section.
