The leaks about Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone have turned into a torrent of information. We now know quite a bit about the Galaxy S8 and its big brother handset S8 Plus, The S8 is due to be launched at the company’s “Unpacked” event in New York next week.
The latest leak of images, and colour choices for the S8 are courtesy of US blogger Evan Blass, a long term leaker of details about upcoming smartphones and tablets since 2012.
Blass has published on Twitter what purports to be a composite photo of the S8 and S8 Plus colour range – black sky, orchid grey and arctic silver. A few hours beforehand he tweeted prices in Euros – €799 ($1014) for the S8, €899 ($1253) for the S8 Plus. Australian pricing is not known at this stage and on past form is likely to be more.
He also predicts the phone will hit the market on April 28, a month after its launch on March 29, US time.
Putting two and two together, we can guess a few likely features. For example, we’re likely to see either iris scanning on the S8 or fully blown facial recognition as rumoured in a Korean publication. Iris scanning was a new feature on last year’s doomed Galaxy Note7 and there’s no suggestion that Samsung will abandon exploring methods of biometric identification.
New premium Android phones feature USB Type-C connectors instead of micro USB ones. The S8 and S8 Plus are likely to follow suit. Expect the S8 to be water and dust resistant, like its predecessor the S7.
There are too interesting questions. Will Samsung follow the lead of Apple, and ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack, or will it take pity on consumers? Will it follow the lead of Sony with the Xperia Z5 Premium, and have a full 4K resolution display, or continue with a QuadHD (2K) one?
And will the S8 adopt Apple’s rumoured move to ditch or virtualise the home button? There have been leaked photos of what is claimed to be S8 handsets without a physical home button.
One thing is for certain. Samsung will be demanding its battery manufacturers follow its eight-point safe battery check laid down in January.
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