The home button has been shifted beneath the “infinity display”. Whether the United Kingdom will get it at the same time as the U.S. again isn’t clear – but if the update does land, perhaps the safest thing to do will be to do your best American accent.
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Samsung used its Unpacked event in New York Wednesday to introduce the next version of its Gear VR headset as well as a new Gear 360 camera alongside of its new Galaxy S8 phone.
Samsung claims its new voice assistant, Bixby, will do much more than rivals from Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. It remains to be seen how this will play out.
One thing that stands out is the smartphone’s encrypted biometric features. For instance, if you usually call your mom at a specific time each day, Bixby will ask you, unprompted, if you’d like to call her at that time. Samsung Pay is also supported out-of-the-box. Or if you’re watching a video on your phone, you can say “Show this on TV”, and – if you have a Samsung TV – that video will show up on the big screen. Samsung has yet to share pricing or release information.
In the USA, the phone will be available for pre-order from March 30, and it looks like the pricing is starting at $700 plus. The phones will go on sale starting April 21 and they come in four different colors, Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, Arctic Silver, Coral Blue and Maple Gold.
The South Korean tech giant has a lot to prove following the global recall of its exploding Galaxy Note 7s. It’s powerful enough that Samsung thinks it can replace your PC – especially if you don’t have incredibly demanding tasks to run. Samsung’s president, DJ Koh took to the stage after, touching on the company’s successes and failures throughout the previous year.
“It is a safe device, it will not set on fire”, he said.
The new Octa-core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.7GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor powering the S8 devices seems to be highly regarded by Samsung, touting 10% performance increase from their last device.
Samsung recalled the phones and shipped replacements, but the newer batteries had welding defects and a lack of protective tape in some battery cells.
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After conducting a series of tests, Samsung has said the issues were caused by problems with the phones’ batteries, design and manufacturing, ABC News noted.
