Samsung’s Galaxy S8: Rumour Roundup
All eyes are on Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 phone. Short of a few major players in the smartphone industry, few phones have had as illustrious or as long a lineage barring the boys from Cupertino. The current generation S7 and its sibling the S7 edge had a lot going for it: an industry leading 12-MP camera with an F/1.7 lens and Dual pixel tech, a nippy Exynos (or Snapdragon processor if you’re running an European or US set) and a crisp Super AMOLED display plus IP68 dust and water resistance.
The Galaxy S8 has to top all this and more while dealing with the wake of the recent Galaxy Note 7’s ill fated launch and recall. They’re taking the time to make sure that the S8 is the best it can be and it seems that it won’t be making its traditional appearance at Mobile World Congress this year based on a quote by Samsung’s Chief of Mobile, Koh Dong-jin during the Note 7 battery overheating press conference recently. Odds are that it will instead be announced sometime in late March with an estimated street date of mid to end of April 2017
According to The Guardian, who claims to have received insider insight into the phone, the Galaxy S8 will come in two different sizes, has the internal project code designation “Dream” and will come with a slew of revolutionary features. One source in China has claimed to have received news on the product codes of the new phones that will be dubbed
“Samsung GALAXY S8 SM-G9500/SM-G950X Samsung GALAXY S8 Plus SM-G9550/SM-G955X”
Samsung GALAXY S8
SM-G9500/SM-G950X
Samsung GALAXY S8 Plus
SM-G9550/SM-G955X— 萌萌的电教 (@mmddj_china) January 16, 2017
Here’s the rest of what’s being bandied about so far, and our take on them. Odds are it may all be hearsay but there’s always a grain of truth in everything…
Iris Scanner
LIKELIHOOD: VERY HIGH
The Galaxy Note 7 had front facing iris sensors that were able to use a scan of your peepers to authenticate and allow access to the phone. The S8 will have this feature to unlock the phone and perhaps allow access for transactions with Samsung Pay which currently uses a fingerprint for authentication.
Desktop Experience (DeX)
LIKELIHOOD: POSSIBLE
The elusive dream of getting a smartphone that can handle papercrunching work like a desktop may just finally be a reality on the Galaxy S8. According to GSMArena’s leaked internal presentation slide, the S8 will have a feature akin to Windows 10’s Continuum where you can hook up your phone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to turn it into an ersatz PC. Based on the slide, you’ll likely hook up the monitor via a USB cable – the fact that the S8 will be using USB Type C will be serendipitous while the keyboard and mouse will be likely via Bluetooth. Whether this can be done natively or whether it relies on a dock station as a separate accessory remains to be seen. Still, it’s looking like a road warrior’s dream and Nougat’s multiwindow capabilities may just make it a practical reality. Still, this rumour has precedent as it coincides with a filing with the US Trademark office for the following filing:
“Application software, namely, for projecting the screen of mobile device to displays via computer peripheral devices and wireless networks; computer peripheral devices; computer software for wireless network communications; computer software, namely, software for controlling user interface mode adaption”
[Source GSMArena]
LIKELIHOOD: POSSIBLE
There’s no need for courage this time around. The Galaxy S8 will likely have a traditional and still practical 3.5mm audio jack so you don’t get fleeced for paying for a pair of earbuds that’ll go missing two weeks in.
Infinity Display in two sizes
LIKELIHOOD: POSSIBLE
This one is still up in the ether but what has been bounced around is that the phone will come in two different sizes- the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus within the 5-inch to 6.5-inch region though final sizes haven’t been nailed down yet. The display will cover most of the front, will be curved like the S7 edge and will be so expansive that they won’t have space to put in the traditional home button much less a logo. The fingerprint reader will be moved to the back. While a number of renders have been put up of dubious origin, one post of a supposedly leaked front-casing screen protector gives a tempting hint as to what the phone may look like. Resolution will likely be equal to or surpass the S7 which means it may even be 4K resolution. There’s also multiple purported renders of it from several casing vendors though the odd thing is that they are anything alike and differ from each other in quite a few details.
Według mojego dostawcy szkieł S8 nie będzie miał wersji flat O.o Ma być S8 i S8 Plus. Do tej pory się nie mylił… pic.twitter.com/sExMoISPY4
— DforDesign (@dfordesign) January 16, 2017
No Front Facing Home Buttton
LIKELIHOOD: VERY HIGH
The traditional Samsung approach to design is to implement a lozenge-shaped home button that has over the years been improved with the addition of a fingerprint sensor. With the prevalent rumours of adding in a huge Infinity display, they’ll have to reallocate buttons elsewhere and odds are it’ll likely end up on the rear like what many competitors have done. One purported leak from GizChina , via noted leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer on Twitter has shown what appears to be an engineering sample lending credence to the fact that it does indeed move all the buttonry to the rear while offering a huge 90% screen-to-body ratio. There’s no space left for a home button either on the front and the iris sensor on the front matches up with prior rumours.
[Source GizChina]
LIKELIHOOD: VERY HIGH
Samsung has bought up the vast majority of the existing supply of Snapdragon 835 processors built with their new 10nm processes, leaving the rest of the competition in the cold likely for some time and relying on current gen chipsets. Usually, Samsung opts for two different processor variants for their phones, based on region. For Europe and the US, they’ve usually preferred using Snapdragon processors. For other regions, they’ve relied on their own Exynos processors. The rumoured Exynos 8895, which also is built using the 10nm FinFET process may be powering the phone and bring significantly better performance for gaming and heavy duty use. According to the Guardian’s source, the phone will likely have at least 64GB of built-in storage expandable via a microSD card slot.
Improved rear camera
LIKELIHOOD: VERY HIGH
The Galaxy S7 had an impressive camera and the S8 will have to top it by quite a bit. It will likely still use their Dual Pixel tech culled from DSLR cameras. The S7 also had an impressive F/1.7 lens aperture that offered superb performance under the gamut of usual camera usage conditions. Speculation runs rife but if there are improvements, it may involve optical zoom in some form or fashion, a larger aperture or the possibility of a dual-lens camera for better depth of field snaps.
Built-in Artificial Intelligence Assistant
LIKELIHOOD: POSSIBLE
In October last year, Samsung quietly acquired Viv Labs that was working on an AI platform in the vein of Alexa, Cortana and the like that was able to respond to naturally phrased language queries. The AI could be smart enough to recognise objects via the rear camera though how this pans out remains to be seen. The likelihood of it making an appearance in some form or fashion on the S8 is high though as it represents the first mass market platform to show what its capable of doing beyond setting dates on a calendar and taking notes for you. It should also be able to translate text for you like restaurant menus and street signage with possible additional third party functionality.
Galaxy S8 Launch Date
LIKELIHOOD: POSSIBLE
One thing is for certain is that it will miss its traditional Mobile World Congress launch window based on official quotes. When it will launch exactly is still open to speculation. One Twitter source @Ricciolo 1 claims that it will launch on March 29 and hit markets sometime in “w17” – week 17. If they follow their traditional game plan, it will possibly see arrival in Asia sometime in April.
And one interesting final clip. Pay special attention to the presentation:
https://youtu.be/JlpyoIGiUPE