Originally Posted by
punstress If by "older" you mean less than 1 year, I guess it is older. I bought right around last Christmas. I have a physical button that goes to the home page. No fingerprint scanner. I don't see another function, not sure what to look for?
I just tried swiping down in one complete motion all the way from the top, and my notifications appeared immediately! That is just what I needed! Thank you!
The date you bought it doesn't matter. What matters is the phone model age. If I could find a brand new in box S7 Edge right now and bought it, it's still a 3 year old model.
The J7 variants were released in 2017 latest in Asia, and Samsung re-released them in the US late 2017 or early 2018. They're still the same 2017 devices.
2018 Samsung phones don't have physical buttons on the front. They stopped making phones with those in 2017. That means your phone is a 2 year old model at least. It's using an old design that doesn't allow the new features.
I don't remember if the Samsung phones then had the feature you have to activate where you can swipe down anywhere from the homescreen to open the notification shade automatically. Check in Home Screen Settings.