Samsung has a tough year ahead of them. After an abysmal response in reception to its master flagship – the Note 7, the company is looking to make the best device it’s ever created in its S line’s next iteration – the Galaxy S8. As is expected, rumours are rife surrounding the device. Here are all the things that the rumour mills have churned out so far regarding the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8.
Display
Probably the most talked about feature about the phone, some reports suggest that the S8 will come with 4K display and will only come with one variant – a dual-edged curved display. But some also argue that there will also be a variant with the flat display. Considering that virtual reality will be a main focus this year on a lot of new phones coming out, the 4K will help a lot with enriching the VR experience. Also, the Note 7 had an HDR-ready display. It won’t be surprising if the S8’s came with that too.
Design
The most notable rumour regarding the design of the phone is that the company will be omitting the home button entirely this time around, letting the face of the phone only bear the screen, with the finger-print sensor being embedded underneath screen itself. This way, Samsung will be able to fit a bigger screen inside a smaller footprint, with the screen real estate taking over the part where the home button would be. Even Samsung teased the public with their own ad featuring a reference design with a face without the home button.
Because the iPhone set the trend, the S8 might follow suit and go headphone jack-less too. But there’s only speculation of that until now according to another rumour by Mashable.
Performance
According to websites like Mashable, they suspect that the S8 might come with the Samsung home-made Exynos 8895 chip and a Mali-G71 graphics chip to provide almost twice as much graphical power than the S7. The international variant is likely to come in that specification, while people are expecting that the US variant will be fitted with the Snapdragon 835 CPU.
As far as the RAM configuration is concerned, some sources claim that it’ll come with 6GB or 8GB of memory, but it’ll definitely be more than 4GB. Internal storage options are pipped to come with either 128GB or 256GB of storage space.
Assistant
Call it either ‘Bixby’ or ‘Viv’, we might most certainly see Samsung’s very own AI arrive on the new S8 flagship, to rival Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana and also Siri. It’ll definitely be more powerful than S Voice and will be integrated with most of Samsung’s own native apps.
Camera
The S7’s camera was nothing short of stellar and was arguably the best camera of 2016. That’s saying a lot, for a smartphone camera that can rival even the best DSLRs out there. The folks over at BGR News suspect that there could be two camera sensors on the back this time around, one being an RGB sensor while the other being a monochrome sensor. Both the sensors will work well together to keep the details sharp and distinct. The Huawei P9 made an excellent case for itself with that set up, but again, that’s only speculation. Rumours also are ‘wide’ that the front facing camera could come with auto-focusing capabilities.
Apart from the above-mentioned points, we are most certain that the phone will come with weatherproof capabilities, that will be even more durable than the S7. We should expect it to be IP68 compliant. Ideally, as far as the release goes, it’s most likely that Samsung will set aside a date to release it during the Mobile World Congress, as it always has and then held a proper release date a few weeks after that at their own event. But by March or April will be the best time for them to release their next flagship.
Lastly, the battery is expected to feature 4,200mAh of juice. The company is also said to be taking steps to take on various measures to make sure the phone doesn’t meet the same fate as the Note 7. The one thing we are almost certainly sure of that isn’t a rumour is that it’ll most definitely come with Nougat out of the box.