Samsung Electronics said on Sunday it would launch its next key device in the aftermath of a burning-battery scandal, the Galaxy S8, on 29 March.
At the end of a product presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company showed a short video clip announcing the date for its traditional “Unpacked Event”.
In past years, the trade fair was the scene of major Samsung launches. This year, Samsung postponed the presentation of its next major handset.
The company withdrew the Galaxy Note 7 last October due to faulty batteries, which led some devices to catch fire.
That caused a loss of consumer trust, wiping out $5.3 billion of operating profit, and allowing Apple’s iPhone to overtake it in sales.
According to a leaked specifications sheet by Techno Buffalo, the Galaxy S8 will feature a 5.8-inch QHD+ Super AMOLED display, 4GB of RAM, IP68 dust and water resistance, 12MP dual-pixel camera, 8MP front camera, an iris scanner, 64GB of expandable memory, Samsung Pay, wireless charging, and bundled earphones tuned by AKG.
Both the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the alleged S8+ are expected to come with Samsung Bixby, the new digital assistant which will launch alongside these flagships with support for up to eight languages.
So far according to leaks, it is known that Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ will be the first phones to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset.
A tipster claiming to be a Samsung employee revealed some details of the S8’s hardware in a series of tweets. For a start, he mentioned that the S8 might not be coming with an IMX 204 Sony sensor as was originally expected. He also adds that there might be a dedicated 6GB RAM variant with an Exynos processor coming to China.
He suggests that there will be 6GB RAM / 64GB storage and a 6GB RAM / 128GB storage variants available in China.
With inputs from Reuters