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Samsung Plans All-Screen Design in New Galaxy S8 Phones (bloomberg.com)

Samsung may have big plans to overcome the whammy of its disastrous Galaxy Note7 this year. The company is reportedly planning to push the boundaries of design with the next flagship smartphone, dubbed the Galaxy S8. The smartphone, which was recently pegged to ship without a headphone jack, will have an "all-screen" design, Bloomberg is reporting. The report adds that there might not be a home button -- at least the way we know it -- and that any part of the lower display will serve as a fingerprint scanner. From the report: The bezel-less displays will provide more viewing real estate while a virtual home button will be buried in the glass in the lower section. Samsung needs the Galaxy S8 to be a hit after suffering through the Note 7 debacle that tarnished its brand, led to an embarrassing recall and may cost the company more than $6 billion. While Samsung is targeting a March release of the S8, that could be delayed until April, the people said. Samsung is adopting tougher testing procedures in the wake of the Note 7 debacle that could push back the launch by about a month, one of the people said.

2 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Isn't this what caused the Note7 disaster? by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, what caused the Note7 disaster was a lack of testing and a bad design of the battery compartment: there wasn't enough space for the battery to expand, so when it did, boom! This could happen with any cellphone, not just a cutting-edge one. Honestly, I'm surprised they made such a seemingly-elementary mistake; these companies have been making small devices with lithium-ion batteries for many years now, so you'd think this would be pretty basic.

    Anyway, they're already saying (in TFS) that they're going to do a more thorough job of testing now to avoid stupid mistakes like that. More thorough testing should also catch other problems that can happen with boundary-pushing designs.

    No, what they really need to do is go back to providing basic features that Apple and others have been removing lately: removable batteries and SDcard slots, and now headphone jacks. I'm listening to music at work now on my cellphone using, you guessed it, my 3.5mm headphone jack. WhyTF would I buy a "cutting edge" cellphone that won't let me use my noise-cancelling headphones at work? Utter stupidity. And no, I'm not going to use some fucking dongle, nor am I going to trash my nice noise-cancelling headphones and buy some shitty Bluetooth headphones.

  2. Yeah, but non-swappable battery and no stereo jack by blind+biker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry Samsung, as a current user... I won't be getting anything above the S5.

    It's probably going to be the LG G5.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.