Samsung to unveil next big phone this week
A teaser poster of Samsung Electronics’Galaxy S8 smartphone
Galaxy S8 available in Korea, US in April
By Kang Seung-woo
NEW YORK - As the much-heralded debut of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S8 smartphone nears, there has been plenty of talk about its features and specifications.
The Korean tech giant has kept a tight rein on information about the phone, but speculation and leaked photos of the presumed S8 are giving an idea of what to expect.
Samsung is scheduled to unveil the S8 at New York’s Lincoln Center Wednesday (local time). The event carries extra significance as the firm, Apple’s biggest rival, is seeking to redeem itself after the Galaxy Note 7 disaster that led to a global recall of the discontinued phablet prone to catching fire. The recall was estimated to have cost Samsung more than $5 billion (5.6 trillion won).
So far, only one thing is for sure: the S8 will feature a Siri-like digital assistant named Bixby. In October, the Seoul-headquartered firm acquired the Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence platform developer Viv Labs, which had developed Siri for Apple iPhones.
According to Samsung, the S8 will have a “dedicated Bixby button” on the side and users will be able to summon the AI assistant with one press.
“For example, instead of taking multiple steps to make a call - turning on and unlocking the phone, looking for the phone application, clicking on the contact bar to search for the person that you’re trying to call and pressing the phone icon to start dialing - you will be able to do all these steps with one push of the Bixby button and a simple verbal command,” Rhee In-jong, Samsung’s head of research and development for software and services, said last week.
In terms of design, the S8 is expected to be available in two sizes - one with a 5.8-inch screen and the other with a 6.2-inch display. Both will feature a super AM-OLED display with high resolution. The S8 also is likely to come with an almost bezel-less, dual-edge curved display, sporting an 18:9 aspect ratio.
Samsung is believed to have removed the physical home button due to the ever-diminishing bezel area.
The fingerprint sensor, which sat at the bottom of the smartphone, will likely be placed next to its camera, on the back of the device.
The S8 is expected to be powered by cutting-edge Samsung and Qualcomm chipsets. These will make the S8 11 percent faster than the S7, with 23 percent quicker graphics processing while being 20 percent more energy efficient.
It will offer 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, with a 12-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera.
Samsung will again use an iris scanner on the S8, which was offered by the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7. There also is speculation that the new smartphone will adopt facial-recognition technology.
When it comes to the battery - the main cause of the Note 7 fiasco - the flagship smartphone is expected to have a smaller battery than the Note 7 to improve safety.
The Note 7 was launched with a 3,600 milliampere hour (mAh) battery last year, but the S8 and the larger S8 Plus are expected to come with batteries that are 3,000mAh and 3,500mAh, respectively.
But there is a downside. According to industry watchers, the 3,000mAh battery - which is 20 percent smaller than that of the Galaxy Note 7 - may not be sufficient to satisfy users.
The likely prices of the S8 and the S8 Plus will be 990,000 won and 1.11 million won, respectively, according to industry insiders, although this may change just before the release date.
The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7, both of which had 64GB of internal storage, were priced at 880,000 won and 988,900 won, respectively.
Orders for the new handset will be taken in major markets, including the United States and Korea, in April, before the phones hit the shelves late in the month.