Who’s Going to Buy A Samsung Galaxy S8?

Evan Blass, notorious — once retired — phone leaker, is up to it again. Blass reports for VentureBeat about the Samsung Galaxy S8, Samsung’s up-and-coming, highly rumored, flagship phone.

Samsung is no stranger to odd phones, with the rumor mill this week alone turning out that Samsung will reportedly be releasing a new device running Tizen 3.0. The S series has always been Samsung’s grounds for appealing to the mass market, with the S6 and S7 both being referred to by multiple reviews as the best Android devices of their respected times. However, if the leaked specs of the S8 turn out to be true, one has to wonder what strain of logic it was designed along.
The phone will reportedly feature both an aux headphone jack, and a USB Type-C port — a welcomed change for many who both enjoy the convenience of two ports, and the future-proofing Type-C provides. However, this simple boon might not be enough for some, based off some of the decisions from the apparently ‘giant-handed’ designers Samsung employs, who made the choice to remove the home button and move the finger print sensor to the back of the phone.

The fingerprint sensor
The phone will come in two models, with 5.8- and 6.2-inch QHD Super AMOLED screens which will cover 83 percent of the devices front panels.
According to the Guardian, the devices will feature a larger than standard aspect ratio — at 18.5:9. Samsung plans to compensate by letting the screens curve downward on the bottom sides of the panel. Apparently the edge design is here to stay.
This is the Samsung Galaxy S8, launching March 29

Samsung is preparing to unveil a pair of Galaxy S8 smartphones significantly different from past models, according to…
VentureBeat

ALL OF THE BAD THINGS

I’m going to be honest, there are a lot. The phone’s camera is not much better than last years, it’s stupidly large, and though the phone will be gaining force touch and desktop features, both lack any signs of need or, at least to me, want.

How many people do you know who often use Microsoft Continuum, or whatever HP’s competing product is called now, outside of a business setting?
Though a good idea, and although Samsung by far has the best chance to create this market, the probability that the service will have some kind of limitation on what software can be used with it, based off of past iterations of Samsung’s software, make me view this feature very skeptically. I only see a mass appeal for business users. For them, I can understand. I’ll be surprised if it develops into anything more than a gimmick for anyone else.
The phone will also come with a feature reminiscent of force touch according to Blass.

“…the pressure-sensitive input technology known as force touch is finally coming to the Galaxy brand, with the lower part of the display supposedly capable of distinguishing between different types of screen presses. Apple first included a similar technology on 2015’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.”

This strikes me as a brash decision. Android 7 does come with app shortcuts built into the software, but as far as I can tell, they’re not widely supported. This might just be another instance of Samsung jumping the gun and playing it dangerous — something we really haven’t seen since the Galaxy S6.

We’ll have to see how this develops, but I don’t have high hopes for Samsung’s upcoming turn of “innovations”.

Who knows, but as a first impression I’m not impressed. I’m just disappointed.