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Samsung hopes S8 will impress this week

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 27 Mar 2017
The Galaxy S8 will feature Samsung's Bixby virtual personal assistant.
The Galaxy S8 will feature Samsung's Bixby virtual personal assistant.

Samsung will on Wednesday hold an event in New York, which will be live-streamed around the world, to launch its flagship Galaxy S8.

The South Korean electronics company needs to repair its brand perception as a viable smartphone manufacturer after its flagship phablet device, the Galaxy Note 7, had to be recalled last year and eventually cancelled after a fault in battery design led to the smartphones catching fire.

The launch of the S8 was pushed out by a few months. Samsung's new handsets are normally launched in February every year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This year, the company apparently wanted to fully resolve the battery issues that led to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco.

Information officially released by the firm, and a series of leaks from Korean-based tech blogs, have given customers a glimpse into what to expect this week.

What we officially know

Last week, Samsung unveiled its own virtual personal assistant (VPA), Bixby, which will be included in the S8. Bixby is the firm's Siri and Google Assistant equivalent. The VPA will supposedly be more conversational than Apple's Siri and ask follow-up questions if it did not understand the request.

Samsung says Bixby will let users control compatible apps via voice only. In Apple's latest update, Siri can interact with other apps, like order an Uber, but users still have to physically touch the phone at some part in the process to complete the order.

Adverts for the Galaxy S8 launch have been taking up prime-time slots on television for the past few weeks.

The ads feature a black screen with two white lines that outline the top and bottom of the device. This suggests the S8 will have a small bezel ? the space between the screen and edge of the device ? and no home button.

This is in line with previously reported leaks.

The company also released an advert in January to show off its new super AMOLED display in South Korea. The video features an unreleased device with small bezels which is suspected to be the S8.

The rumours

Various leaks suggest there will be two versions of the S8 unveiled this week: one with the standard 5.7-inch display and the second with a larger 6.2-inch screen. The curved 'Edge' display that previously appeared on the S6 and S7 is said to have been done away with. Both S8 smartphones will have flat screens.

As there will be no home screen button at the bottom of the screen, it is rumoured the fingerprint sensor will be embedded into the screen or at the back of the device.

The S8 is expected to be one of the first phones to market with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 835 processor. Both the S8 smartphone models will allegedly keep the 3.5mm headphone jack, which Apple controversially decided not to include in its iPhone 7 range last year.

An updated version of the virtual reality headset, the Gear VR, and the Samsung 360 camera are also expected to be announced this week.

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