Samsung is indeed delaying the release of its next-gen flagship Galaxy S8. The Korean company historically unveiled its Galaxy S line phones at the Mobile World Congress. But this time it’s going to give the MWC a miss. A new report coming out of Samsung’s home country claims that the S8 would be unveiled in New York in late March or early April.
Why did Samsung delay the release?
Sources familiar with the matter told Naver.com (via SamMobile) that the Galaxy S8 would hit the store shelves on April 18. It corroborates with a previous report from the same publication claiming that Samsung executives had decided during a strategy meeting at the company headquarters to push back the S8 release to April.
The company wanted additional time to regain consumer confidence and beef up its testing procedures to prevent a Galaxy Note 7-like debacle. Samsung has promised to reveal the cause of Note 7 explosions by the end of this month. The explosions were reportedly caused by a hardware design issue rather than a battery problem.
Mass production to begin in March
The April 18 release date makes sense considering another report recently indicated that the device would enter mass production in March. Samsung plans to produce 10 million units of the phone ahead of the April launch. The Korean company had released the Galaxy S7 on March 11 last year. But the previous versions such as the S6, S5, and S4 all went on sale in April.
Separately, a leaked image posted on Chinese microblogging site Weibo shows the Galaxy S8 in the real world. The image confirms many of the design changes that have been rumored. The physical home button has disappeared. The phone has nearly all-screen front with 90% screen-to-body ratio. The home button and fingerprint scanner are rumored to sit underneath the display.
Galaxy S8 being tested in China
In fact, the leaked image looks a lot like a concept designed by Veniamin Geskin. Samsung has been testing the Galaxy S8 in China. The Galaxy S8 is said to arrive in two sizes: 5-inch and 6-inch. The 6-inch Galaxy S8 Plus would come with an optional S Pen stylus to lure the Galaxy Note 7 users. The upcoming phones will feature Bixby AI assistant that will be compatible with all native apps on the handset. However, there are speculations that Google, which owns Android, could oppose the addition of Bixby on the S8 because it would compete against Google’s own AI assistant.
The US version of Galaxy S8 would be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor. Qualcomm has unveiled its latest flagship chipset. Snapdragon 835 delivers 20% faster performance, is 25% more energy efficient, and 35% smaller than Snapdragon 820.
