Real phones have real curves: Samsung's bold S7 Edge (pictures)

Samsung's top-notch Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge? For fans of bigger screens, the curved-screen Edge is what you're after.

Sold in the premium price bracket, the S7 Edge is available now, starting at $799, AU$1,249 or £639.

The S7 Edge ships with the latest version of Android Marshmallow (6.0.1).

Samsung's edge screen has gotten more sophisticated since it first appeared.

In the beginning it looked a little like a gimmick.

From left to right: Galaxy Note Edge, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus and the S7 Edge.

Samsung has packed a lot of functionality into the Edge's erm...edge.

The Contacts Edge lets you group together your most called or messaged contacts.

Contacts can be pulled from the Contacts Edge for easy access to call, email or messaging details.

A little more practically, you can also get your Calendar listings.

Apps Edge is a handy, customisable secondary launcher.

And yes, you can tell the S7 Edge which side you want to the edge function to appear on and even customise size and transparency.

You can customise the order of the different Edges and what appears as you swipe.

You can call up local weather information...

...and a compass...

...or even a ruler.

Another Edge use scrolls a news ticker with headlines that display even when the screen is off. Notifications also appear here.

The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge alongside the iPhone 6S Plus and Google Nexus 6P.

If black is too sedate for you, you can get the Edge in gold or silver. Oh I'm sorry: that's "gold platinum" and "silver titanium".

In fairness, that gold does stand out compared to the black.

Like the S7 pictured here, the Edge's rear camera has 12 megapixels and is terrific.

No upgrade to USB-C for either of the phones this time around, so if you're moving from a recent Lumia or Nexus, you can mothball that cable for a while.

You might not be taking the battery out any time soon, but expandable memory makes a return to the S7 family with a microSD slot.

The fingerprint scanner is built into the home button, same as earlier Galaxy models.

And also returning is the waterproofing that made the S5 such a popular phone for being out and about.

A super-quick autofocus makes capturing unexpected photo-ops even easier.

Both the S7 and the S7 Edge suffer from SSD: shiny surface disorder. The rear gets covered in fingerprints insanely quickly.

But when clean, it's an impressively slick look.

The Game Launcher brings all of your mobile games together.

It also adds some battery saving features and allows you to easily switch off alerts while gaming.

The 5-megapixel has enough beautification modes to ensure no one will ever recognise you from your online dating profile photo.

You can edit and share the image immediately afterwards.

If Samsung follows last year's pattern, we should see another Note Edge this year and maybe an Edge Plus. Find out why the Edge is our number-one phone splurge.