What Will Samsung Galaxy S8 Offer — Our Rumination

What all does the Galaxy S8 need to be, to put Samsung back at the podium? We make a list.

Life’s unpredictable, and unforgiving. When you’re in the public’s eye, even more so.

One misstep and years of euphoria vaporises.

Samsung announced the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge in March 2016, and received oodles of praise for design, powerful specs and great camera, when people got their hands on the device. Samsung had pulled off another coup d’etat. Then, as has happened for years now, Samsung followed it up with it’s left jab — the introduction of the Note7 in August. Ordinarily the Note series has been Samsung’s “serious” platform, which not only caters to the business folk, but to tech aficiandos, showcasing what power and utility really means on a handheld device.

But the Note7 crashed and burned (literally) so badly, that it’s left even the staunchest of Samsung loyalists shaken.

Undoubtedly Samsung would like to wake up from this awful dream, and put it behind them once and for all. Well, they seem to have taken the first step to move on — speculations of their next in the Galaxy S series have germinated.

Surely, they realise that the next Galaxy S device will be more than just an annual upgrade of the existing series, it will also be saddled with proving that the Note7 fiasco was an one-off blip and not a testament of any “waning” of Samsung’s technological innovativeness.

If Samsung follows previous release patterns, chances are we will see a Samsung Galaxy S8 launch at Mobile World Congress next year. The show takes place from 27 February to 2 March 2017, which would mean the potential launch date for the Samsung Galaxy S8 could be 26 February. There had been suggestions that the launch could be brought forward to regain consumer confidence after the issues with the Note7.

Time will tell.

The bigger question is, what will the S8 (if thats what it will end up being titled) host, to put Samsung back in the race?

The Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge followed their predecessors closely when it came to their design. A couple of refinements were made, which included reducing the rear camera bump in comparison to the S6 and S6 edge however, on the whole, the new flagships were similar to their predecessors. We’d expect the Samsung Galaxy S8 to change things up a little bit more in the design department.

What design change would those efforts culminate in, is difficult to predict as of now, however we could share what we would like to see included.

As USB Type-C was missed off the S7 and S7 edge spec list, we’d expect to see it on board, which will also help the Galaxy S8 and S8 edge (if there is one) improve their audio capabilities. LG and HTC, both have made moves in this area so it would be an obvious feature for Samsung to focus on, to stay with the competition.

We’d love to see the S8 slim down a little and it would be interesting to see what an all-metal build would do to Samsung’s standing, instead of the current metal and glass concoctions. With the S6 edge, Samsung had finally relented and moved to more upmarket materials in their devices (thank the Lord for that!).

The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge both offer Quad HD displays with pixel densities of 575 ppi and 534 ppi, respectively. The S7 has a 5.1-inch size while the S7 edge has a 5.5-inch size and, if there are to be two separate phones again, we wouldn’t expect this to change for the S8, at least not by much.
That said, we’d love to see the screen to body ratios improve slightly, but in terms of overall size, we’d expect no change.

With VR becoming more and more popular, higher resolution displays are more important. The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium might be expensive, but if you’re into smartphone-controlled VR, its 4K display offers a great experience, and as Samsung is already in the VR business, it would make business sense to offer a compatible device with a higher resolution display for the Gear VR or any further VR devices. Chinese blogging sources suggest the company has shown off a 5.5-inch 4K AMOLED display offering a pixel density of 806 ppi, but whether this will appear on the S8 remains unknown for now. Fingers crossed.

To introduce a cat amongst the hypothetical pigeons, a leaked set of specifications now claims that the Galaxy S8 would offer a 5.2-inch display with a 4096x2160 pixel resolution. This would not only make it slightly bigger than the current Galaxy S7, but it would also put its pixel density at 891 ppi.

So it seems that the resolution is most probably getting a bump — the question remains though, do our eyes even recognise these high-resolutions? So is it worth it? Well, if we get it for free, then that’s just as well, we only hope that if the resolution is indeed increased for the S8 and S8 edge, it’s doesn’t come at the cost of battery life!

On the cameras front, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge feature a 12 megapixel rear camera with an aperture of f/1.7 and larger 1.44µm pixels. The front-facing camera is 5 megapixel, also with an f/1.7 aperture.
Rumours suggest the company is working on a new 1/2.3-inch sensor with an f/1.4 aperture allowing for even better low-light photography capabilities than the current flagships cover. Samsung is speculated to deliver a 1/1.7-inch sensor eventually. Claims also suggested the Galaxy S8 might appear with an 8 megapixel front camera accompanied with a dual rear camera, with two different sensors — one at 12 megapixels and the other at 13 megapixels, something we have already seen on the LG G5, Huawei P9, and more recently, Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus.
Contradicting these speculations however is another, claiming the Galaxy S8 will have a 30 megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization, coupled with a 9 megapixel front-facing snapper.

Whichever way this particular set up is delivered, one is fairly sure that Samsung will deliver a killer punch as far as cameras go. They are the current benchmark in the Android world, with the spectacular concoction they delivered in the Galaxies 7

Processors: Ah! Samsung’s fiefdom this! The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge arrived in two models — one sported the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, while the other had the Exynos Octa 8 chip inside, both with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage with microSD support for further storage expansion. There is a 3,000 mAh battery inside the S7 and a 3,400 mAh battery inside the S7 edge.

With every new flagship, comes new hardware. A faster, more powerful processor will certainly be on board the Galaxy S8 and S8 edge, and possibly a jump in RAM — 8 GB? The Samsung Note7 was rumored to have 6 GB of RAM however only 4 GB was offered, so perhaps the increase will come in the S8 instead. According to one leak, we should expect a 3.2 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 chip, supported by 6 GB of RAM.

Personally, I think this last bit of conjecture is the most compelling and plausible. But hey, if any one can solder on 8 GB of RAM onto a circuit board, it’s Samsung. So, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong!

Samsung will keep microSD support on board, as it didn’t go down well when it was removed for the S6 and S6 edge, though it has been claimed it would be offered in 64 GB and 128 GB models. This suggests the company still won’t offer support for Marshmallow’s Flex feature, allowing users to combine the phone’s internal storage with the storage of the SD card. Galaxy S8 could have a 4,200 mAh battery — a bigger battery capacity is always welcome, however we’d like to see software improvements to help with power management, along with predicted fingerprint and retina scanners to enhance security.

Vanilla Android will probably never happen and that’s okay, but it would be great to see the best of TouchWiz on top of a close to pure Android experience.
HTC launched it’s latest flagship with a refined version of Sense over Android and it works well, delivering a cleaner experience with less duplication. We’d love to see Samsung do this too for its next flagships. And w’d love to see some restraint from Samsung, for once. There’s no real benefit that most users see from Samsung’s “bloatware” that comes bundled with every one of their phones. So, if the customer doesn’t want it, why push it, Samsung?

What else will appear on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 edge? Who knows at the moment! We have months of wait ahead of us but it would be interesting to see a change in design for one, along with improvements in camera capabilities and software refinements.

Last words: Currently Samsung is the world’s #1 Android manufacturer, but the Note7 has left a gaping hole, and there are consequences of it that even the S7 and S7 edge are paying for the Note7’s temperamental nature. Samsung too, seems to be looking a little beleaguered these days. To top it all, there are at least a dozen manufacturers out there who are capable of as good devices as Samsung is, and they’ve all already laced up their running boots and hit the tracks. So, while the S8 may be a very good device, don’t be surprised if you find that it’s not the best, nor does it create quite the furore it’s forbearers did. A year is a long time in technology and Samsung might just learn that first hand.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.