GALAXY S8 DESIGN – MAJOR OVERHAUL?

GALAXY S8 FEATURES – WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THE GALAXY S8?

The Galaxy S8 is guaranteed to flaunt some of 2017’s latest and greatest mobile hardware, but Samsung is keeping a tight lid on details.

Here’s what you can expect to see in terms of Galaxy S8 features...

GALAXY S8 DESIGN – MAJOR OVERHAUL?

Samsung might be planning a major design overhaul for this year’s Galaxy S8.

A report from Korea’s ETNews says Samsung wants to ditch the Home button, integrated its functionality into the display instead – just like Apple’s rumoured iPhone 8. Samsung allegedly wants to do this to “fill all of the front of the Galaxy S8 with just screen”. This video from Android blog Techdroid shows a Galaxy S8 render based on such rumours:

We’ve also heard a rumour that the Galaxy S8 may have significantly smaller bezels than the Galaxy S7. Speaking to The Investor, Park Won-sang a Principal Engineer for Samsung Display, said that the company was aiming to introduce an OLED display with a greater-than 90% screen-to-body ratio. He went on to reveal that Samsung hoped to create a handset with a 99% screen-to-body ratio in the next few years. For contrast, most phones currently have an average ratio of around 80%.

These rumours were echoed by a Bloomberg report from November that claimed Samsung is planning to kit the Galaxy S8 out with an “all-screen front”. The article says the “bezel-less” phone will “provide more viewing real estate”, with Samsung expected to ditch the physical Home button and bury its functionality in the lower section of the glass instead.

But the biggest boost to this rumour’s credibility came courtesy of Synaptics’ announcement that it had developed a new fingerprint scanner – the Natural ID FS9100 optical fingerprint sensor.

What’s important about the FS9100 is that it can scan your fingerprint through 1mm of “full cover glass”, which would enable Samsung to hide the scanner underneath the glass, rather than having to embed it in the Home button.

“By bringing optical sensing technology with the right form factor and power consumption envelope to smartphones and tablets, Synaptics is enabling the elimination of the Home button, which is a critical next step to full top-to-bottom, edge-to-edge smartphone and tablet displays,” says Les Santiago, Research Director for analyst firm IDC.

Importantly, Samsung has used Synaptics fingerprint sensors on previous flagship smartphones, including the Galaxy S8. So that makes it even more likely that this new sensor will make it to a future Samsung handset. The only possible roadblock would be that Synaptics says manufacturers can sample the sensor from Q1 this year, with manufacturing beginning in Q2 – that may be too late for inclusion in the Galaxy S8.

With those leaks in mind, a new concept render has been created by the appropriately named Concept Creator, which offers a quirky vision of Samsung's next flagship smartphone:

And here's an image that VentureBeat's (generally reliable) Evan Blass claims actually depicts the real Galaxy S8: