After a year to forget, Samsung is reportedly looking to make amends in 2017, with the launch of its Galaxy S8 flagship phone that will come with an all-screen front.
There is an overwhelming sense of last chance saloon for Samsung and its future release of the Galaxy S8, in what has been a year of expensive PR disasters – most notably the explosive Galaxy Note7.
When it launched the Galaxy S7 earlier this year, Samsung banked on the uniqueness of having a curved screen as being enough to take on the might of Apple and the iPhone.
But despite it receiving critical acclaim from journalists, the phone was never able to usurp the iPhone from being the must-have smartphone on the market.
Now in its latest effort to regain a lot of lost customer support in 2016, Bloomberg has reported that Samsung plans to release the Galaxy S8 with an all-screen front for the first time.
The phone design will be completely overhauled to remove any bezels from the side of the screen, but will also see the removal of its physical home button at the bottom of the screen.
A source speaking with Bloomberg said that the home button will be buried beneath the all-glass screen and that the Galaxy S8 will only come with a wrap-around OLED display.
Dropping the headphone jack?
Other details on the phone have been scant, but one other possibility is that Samsung will follow the path of Apple in removing the headphone jack from its next smartphone, according to other sources.
It is being suggested that while Samsung is aiming to have the phone released in March 2017, this could be pushed out to April.
According to the source, this is to put the Galaxy S8 through the toughest of testing procedures to ensure disasters like the Note7 release do not happen again.
Aside from new hardware, Samsung has already stated that the phone will ship with the company’s new AI assistant developed by the original creators of Siri, Viv Labs.
Samsung Galaxy S7. Image: Leszek Kobusinski/Shutterstock