Samsung Galaxy S8 Arrives April 21

Samsung today gathered the New York City area media at Lincoln Center today to officially launch the company’s latest flagship Android phones, the Galaxy S8 and S8+.

The devices herald a “new era of smartphone design,” said DJ Koh, president of Samsung’s Mobile Communications Business, during his keynote address here in Manhattan today. Uttering his take on Samsung’s newest tag line, “smartphone unboxed,” he unveiled the practically bezel-less phones with the now-familiar curved touchscreens that slope over the sides.

Now, the viewable screen area stretches nearly to the top and bottom of the devices, where two thin strips reside. The top portion contains an 8-megapixel front-facing camera and speaker.

The home button has been incorporated into the screen. This required Samsung to move the fingerprint reader to the back of the phones near the camera, which is now a 12-megapixel shooter with dual-pixel sensor.

Samsung refers to the new design as an “Infinity Display,” said Justin Denison, senior vice president of Product Strategy and Marketing at Samsung. “Where there were barriers, we removed them, giving you a higher screen-to-body ratio than ever before.”

When it arrives on shelves on April 21, the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 and 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+ will feature OLED screens with a resolution of 2,960 pixels by 1,440 pixels. The screen is certified Mobile HDR Premium by the UHD Alliance, enabling owners to view HDR video content from streaming services like Amazon Prime.

Inside, processing power is provided by a 64-bit octa-core chip manufactured with a new 10nm manufacturing processes. Both models include 4GB of memory and 64GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded with a 256GB MicroSD card.

Somewhat following Apple’s lead, Samsung also introduced a new virtual assistant called Bixby. Billing the technology as an “intelligent interface,” Bixby can recommend other points of interest when users take a snapshot of a local landmark or show users where they can purchase an item they capture with their cameras.

Galaxy S8 also borrows a page from the HP Elite x3’s playbook. The Elite x3 is a Windows smartphone that doubles as a desktop PC when connected to a dock. Samsung today unveiled its new DeX dock, which will enable users to use an Android desktop interface, complete with keyboard and mouse support.

Naturally, Samsung is eager to move past last year’s disastrous Galaxy Note 7 release. Without expressly mentioning the troubled handset, Denison assured attendees that the Galaxy S8 and S8+ are being built with the “toughest safety process ever.”

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020