Just about a week or so ago, Samsung confirmed that it wouldn’t be using the world’s biggest phone show as a launching pad for its new flagship – a slight surprise given the fact that the company really need a big statement soon in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7 debacle and, well, all of the other stuff currently plaguing the company.
Of course, after all of that, there’s something to be said for waiting to get things right, especially as the electronics giant has only recently finished its extensive and (one assumes) pricy investigations into what happened to the device. The latest word, unearthed by Venture Beat, points to a March 29 launch for the Samsung Galaxy S8 – a full month after Mobile World Congress.
And while the company is taking its time, lessons learned from the Note fiasco have apparently not precluded Samsung from going big with the device – quite literally, with a display that’s said to be even larger than the phablet line. The device will reportedly arrive in two sizes: a very big 5.8-inch and a downright ridiculously massive 6.2-inch QHD Super AMOLED.
Samsung’s gotten quite good at jamming big screens into devices without making them too unwieldy in recent years, and part of the trickery this time out comes courtesy of familiar curved display, coupled with an abandoning of front navigation buttons. The devices should ship with Android Nougat, powered (in some regions, at least) by a Snapdragon 835, courtesy of Samsung’s manufacturing partnership with Qualcomm.
(Recent rumors point to a complete lack of 835 launches at MWC in a few weeks as Samsung hogs the supply for its new phone.)
The USB-C jack is unsurprisingly back, alongside a headphone jack, which Samsung had previously mocked Apple for dropping. The phone is also said be the first to support Bixby, Samsung’s home-brewed alternative to Siri and Google Assistant.