Samsung won’t be launching the Galaxy S8 during the highly publicised Mobile World Congress next month. While reports and rumors all over the Internet predicted the latest flagship release in February, Samsung has decided to push it to a later date.
It was Samsung mobile chief Koh Dong-jin who has divulged details on the flagship’s release date. He told press that Samsung would break from the tradition of releasing the Galaxy S phone during MWC, which begins on February 27, as reported by Reuters.
To recall, last year Samsung announced the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge at Mobile World Congress and started sales from March. The MWC is a global tradeshow that attracts over 100,000 attendees from 200 plus countries. The yearly mobile technology exhibition takes place in Barcelona, Spain.
So if Samsung will not be releasing the S8 during the period, what precise dates to expect? Some reports speculated an April launch back in December 2015.
A 9to5 Google report said Samsung had plans to host a dedicated event in New York City in April to unveil the Galaxy S8. The delay comes in the backdrop of the Note7 fires that put a big dent on Samsung’s sales.
Galaxy S8 is undoubtedly the most important flagship and Samsung is taking additional precaution to patch all safety flaws.
Note7 Battery Explosions
Samsung discontinued the Note7 smartphone after the batteries began to explode. In a statement on Sunday, Samsung said it conducted several months of in-depth investigations and blamed the lithium-ion batteries for overheating the batteries.
Samsung conducted large-scale tests of 200,000 devices and 30,000 batteries (Samsung)
“Our investigation examined every aspect of the Galaxy Note7 including hardware and software, and related processes, such as assembly, quality assurance testing, and logistics,” it said.
A team of 700 engineers and researched reportedly conducted tests on more than 20,000 fully-assembled Galaxy Note7s and more than 300,000 batteries.
“We are taking responsibility for our failure to ultimately identify and verify the issues arising out of battery design and manufacturing,” the statement said. “We have taken several corrective actions to ensure this never happens again.”
The overheating was caused by separate problems in batteries sourced from two different suppliers. The first one had design flaw with the external casing being too small for the components inside, leading to short-circuit. And for the second battery, the cause leading to ignite was different. It was the welding process that created an internal short-circuit
Samsung recalled 2.5 million units of the oversized Note7 in September 2016. The recall had cost the company a staggering $5.3 billion.
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