In this video, we discuss all of the credible leaks and rumors surrounding Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S8 and S8 edge smartphones. While it's important to note that none of these features have been confirmed by Samsung, they do come from credible sources and should help us get an idea as to what we can expect from Samsung's upcoming flagships. Are you excited for Samsung's Galaxy S8?
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The reason why you are here is because you want to know what the Galaxy S8 will consist of. The Galaxy S8 is going to be a make or break device for Samsung as the company tries to recover from the Note 7 disaster that cost the company billions of dollars and just severely crippled its brand image. It’s not that the Note 7 was a bad device, it just unfortunately had faulty batteries and/or a faulty design that causes some batteries to overheat and explode. Thus forcing the company to recall all the units. If the Note 7 weren’t recalled, it would have been my favorite phone of 2016, the runner-up being the Galaxy S7 edge (in my opinion of course).
So given how great the S7 and S7 edge devices are, it makes me really excited for the S8 and the S8 edge. We have compiled a list of all the leaked and heavily rumored features of the S8 to essentially ruin the surprise for you when Samsung officially launches its next flagship in April.
Design
First of all, Samsung’s head of mobile said that “Samsung has considered it would make the edge display as the identity of the Galaxy S smartphone lineup if the company can provide consumers differentiated user experience through software and user-friendly functions (for the curved screen).” We know Samsung wants to go all edge but we don’t exactly know when. It’s very likely we won’t see them go all in with the edge screen on the S8 so there will be a flat or a standard S8 as well as a larger S8 edge with a curved display.
The build will likely consist of the same materials: metal and glass, two very high quality premium materials. I have no problems with those materials besides the fact that they’re a little bit more prone to damage, at least the glass is. But you can’t really beat metal and glass. There will be a 3.5mm headphone jack. There was a report that surfaced not too long after the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus launched that said Samsung would follow suit and remove the headphone jack. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
We’ll see a USB Type-C port, wireless charging, an iris scanner (similar to the Note 7), and a fingerprint scanner of course. There’s talk that Samsung will incorporate stereo speakers in the S8 and the S8 edge. If they did, they might be Harman-branded as Samsung is actually buying Harman, the audio company. Fingers are crossed because I think that is one area that Samsung really needs to step it up in, it’s with the audio. I will not be at all surprised though if they turn the call speaker into more of a loudspeaker with more of a loud, robust speaker kind of similar to the iPhones. So if they did that, there would be a front-facing speaker up top and of course there would be the normal bottom-facing speaker in the bottom; thus creating a stereo set of speakers.
Things started to get a little bit more interesting when we talk about the displays. Some rumors suggest a 4K display to help with the VR element Samsung has with its flagships. We will see 4K displays in smartphones. It’s only a matter of time but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. We’ll likely see a Super AMOLED display with improved brightness and contrast with a 2K QHD resolution. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think (in my opinion of course) a 4K display would be nice but it would drain the battery like crazy and it wouldn’t honestly look that much better than a 2K QHD panel. Now for virtual reality, that’s a completely different discussion and it would make a big difference.
Things get even more interesting when we talk about the display sizes. The case renders of the S8 have leaked along with handset’s measurements. The case renders show the S8 edge measures 152 x 78 x 7.94 mm, making it longer and wider than the S7 edge because the display will be larger. The S8 edge will see a 6.3-inch screen. The S8 will measure in at 140 x 72 x 7.3 mm, making it a tad bit shorter and thinner than the Galaxy S7 but still a little bit wider. This report makes it sound like the S8 will also feature a curved display, which contrasts an earlier report. Also, those measurements are without taking into account the curved edges. The only way for Samsung to make the S8 and S8 edge displays larger while keeping the overall design about the same size as the S7 and S7 edge is to decrease the size of the bezels around the displays and surprise, surprise that’s exactly what they’re expected to do. They won’t be as thin as the bezels found on Xiaomi Mi Mix, which we recently reviewed but they’ll be much thinner than before. Though it does raise the question about where the fingerprint scanner will be located. Some say it will be incorporated into the display but I doubt that. I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
Camera
In terms of cameras, the phones should feature two camera sensors-- a wide-angle sensor and more of a cropped main sensor. If that were the case, which the rumor suggests, Samsung would also have some sort of Bokeh feature that would make the background extra blurry similar to a DSLR and similar to the iPhone 7 Plus. One of the latest reports also suggests the 8-megapixel front-facing sensor will feature an iris scanner, which we talked about earlier. It will also have auto-focus.
Performance
The performance looks really good too. Samsung phones have always been high ballers in the performance department. I think the only thing that’s held them back is TouchWiz, the skin running on top of Android.
The S8 and S8 edge will feature an Exynos processor. If you live outside of the United States, it might be the A895 chipset with ARM’s new Mali-G71 CPU. If you do live in the United States, you’ll very likely see a Snapdragon processor of sorts. We don’t know exactly which one but it might likely be the new Snapdragon 835 Octa-Core CPU with 6GB of RAM. I’ve seen reports claim 8GB of RAM but to be honest guys, that just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense for Samsung to jump from 4GB of RAM to 8GB of RAM in one year. I thought the Note 7 would be the phone to have 6GB of RAM but it’s looking like the S8 and S8 edge will be the phones to get the RAM increase.
It also goes without saying that both devices will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. If you guys aren’t familiar with Android for whatever reason, Nougat is Google’s latest Android OS featuring many bug and security improvements over Marshmallow and several just very handy features like true multitasking, support for the new Vulkan API, and an improved battery life.
Battery
In terms of battery life, the battery capacities should be very similar to the S7 and S7 edge; which is not really a bad thing. The S7 edge had pretty good battery life. The S8 edge will feature a significantly larger battery life though than the S8.
Features
Some other features include “Viv”, artificial intelligence/ personal assistant. Samsung is definitely working on its own AI assistant. But due to a contract it has with Google, it might not actually come into fruition or it might not actually launch on Samsung’s next flagships.
Another feature that is highly anticipated is IP68 water-resistance. IP68 water-resistance was found on the last two or three Samsung phones. So it’s very likely it’s going to return in the S8 and S8 edge.
These phones will be the cream of the crop of Android smartphones so you can expect to pay a pretty penny for them. The standard S8 will be priced at around $700 off-contract while the S8 edge will be priced at around $800 off-contract; and that’s a pretty conservative estimate. It will be more expensive, of course, depending on the storage configuration you select.
So that’s a lot of information for you. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the S8 and S8 edge so let me know what they are in a comment down below.
