It would seem that 2017 will be the year of the bezel-less smartphone. As the biggest mobile event of the year, MWC 2017, draws closer, leaks from the likes of LG reveal that the company’s upcoming G6 flagship smartphone will severely cut down on screen bezels. Now, a new report from The Guardian hints at the fact that Samsung will debut their own version of a bezel-less display.
The Guardian are calling it an ‘infinity’ display and apparently it’s bezels are so thin, Samsung couldn’t even put their logo in front.
According to the news site’s insider sources, the Galaxy S8 will come in two screen sizes that range somewhere in the five and six inch region and have been codenamed Dream and Dream 2. However, despite that, the new devices will have smaller proportions than the existing Galaxy S7 and S7 edge thanks to the minimal bezels. Both models will also be curved on the left and right sides of the display, so there will be no non-curved Galaxy S8. Since the top and bottom bezels are so slim, there will likely be no capacitive back button either.
Alleged front glass plate of the Galaxy S8
Besides that, the smartphone is also said to sport an Iris scanner on the front of the phone, like the Galaxy Note7, to unlock the device and authorise payments. Since it looks like there will no longer be a physical home button on the front of the S8, The Guardian’s sources say that Samsung has moved the fingerprint scanner to the bottom of the handset. I’d imagine that this will make it rather difficult to make Samsung Pay transactions, though. Still, there are rumours floating around that the company will embed it under the display in front instead.
Powering the handset will Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 835 processor that’s developed on Samsung’s new 10nm process. For Malaysia, we’re likely to get the variant with Samsung’s own chip inside, however.
Other pieces of juicy information The Guardian managed to get out of their sources was that the Samsung Galaxy S8 will come with some form of AI assistant. This assistant can also perform tasks like object recognition using the smartphone’s camera similar to Google Goggles. There is, however, no confirmed name for the AI system. There is also no information on whether it will ship with the Google Assistant in some markets.
Speaking of the camera, the report indicates that the S8 will not be utilising a dual-camera setup. Instead, Samsung will stick to a similar single-camera setup that utilises the company’s dual-pixel technology. However, it will have incremental improvements to image quality, low-light performance and speed. Considering how good the S7 edge’s camera is, I can’t say I’m too disappointed. More speed on one of the fastest smartphone cameras on the market? Yes, please.
Then we’ve got the slightly more far-fetched bits of information. According to the report, the S8 will also have a new range of accessories. The most interesting of which is an accessory called DeX (for desktop extension) that will work like Microsoft’s Continuum and let you hook up a monitor + keyboard + other peripherals and use your smartphone as an Android PC.
We’ve all seen rumours like this before, with the Google Pixel, that never turned into fruition so I’d suggest that you take this with a big grain of salt.
Samsung’s upcoming successor to the Galaxy S7 will not make its debut during the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona this year. Instead, the handset has been rumoured to be launched on the 29th of March. This delay comes following the Note7 fiasco.
What do you guys think of this latest set of rumours? Let me know in the comments below! Also, keep in mind that these are not officially confirmed specifications so take it with the appropriate amount of scepticism.
