Samsung Galaxy S8 rumors: what has leaked so far

Samsung is finally taking the wraps off the Galaxy S8 later today in New York, but we’ve still got time to squeeze in a few more leaks. Like, for example, the phone’s user guide. Yep, the whole document got posted online earlier at Samsung’s download center (the link’s here, but it’s locked away behind a password now). Phandroid caught it before it got sealed up, and although there aren’t many surprises, it’s still a good overview of what the S8 will be offering.

There’s the “Edge screen” with its super-slim bezels, the intelligent assistant Bixby (capable of navigating the UI, setting reminders, and performing image searches from your camera), and Samsung Dex — which allows you to connect the phone to an external display and use it like a computer with keyboard and mouse.

You know what's coming tomorrow, you've known and waited for it for months now. Samsung's 2017 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, will be officially announced, and one of the most critical periods in the company's history will begin. The phone Samsung launches on Wednesday will carry greater expectations and have to prove a lot more than usual. Even as the world's biggest smartphone maker, Samsung's mobile credibility was deeply shaken by the Galaxy Note 7 snafu, so it now needs to reassert its reliability while also rebooting its technological advantage. Here's a rundown of the biggest challenges facing Samsung as it prepares to take the wraps off the Galaxy S8.

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Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, is just days away. Samsung is hosting a special event in New York this week on March 29th to announce its latest and greatest smartphone, with a radical new design that could be the first major update to the company’s smartphone design language since the Galaxy S6.

It’s been a rough few months for Samsung’s smartphones after the battery scandal that surrounded the Galaxy Note 7. The S8 marks the first major phone released by the company since the ill-fated Note 7, and along with the usual pressures of releasing a new flagship in an increasingly competitive market, Samsung has to come out from the shadow of the Note 7 with the Galaxy S8 to win back consumers.

The debut of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is less than a week away, but the leaks keep coming. Today a video surfaced online that shows the actual keyboard interface of the device and someone typing on it. SamMobile first spotted the video and points out that the keyboard isn’t actually the interesting part. It’s the white bezels facing us. This contrasts with previous images we’ve seen of the device, making us wonder if maybe there will be various color options for the front.

For now, take a minute to brush up on everything we know about the S8 and its debut. A lot has leaked and already been announced, including Samsung’s new digital assistant Bixby and the rumored DeX, which will reportedly allow users to extend a Galaxy S8 into a full “Galaxy Desktop” computer. Buckle in for next week; it’s going to be good.

We have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Samsung’s Galaxy S8, which is set to debut on March 29th in New York. And now, we have even more solid backing on the phone’s default screen resolution and adjustments that can be made to it, thanks to a leak posted to Twitter.

As you see above, there are three options for screen resolution: HD+ (1480 x 720), FHD+ (2220 x 1080), and QHD+ (2960 x 1440). The default resolution is QHD+. This was rumored before. People might want to change their resolution to fit more on their screen, especially now that it’s so massive, although the option to change resolution isn’t new on Galaxy phones.

Right now, we’ve seen more than enough leaked imagery of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8, but some mysteries about the flagship still remain. One of the biggest, is what exactly Samsung is planning with its rumored desktop dock? According to leaked company slides, the feature will work like Microsoft Continuum, allowing users to power a desktop UI of some sort from their phone. Now, though, we might have our first look at the dock itself, thanks to the listing below supplied by WinFuture.de:

As the text and picture show, the dock will supposedly cost €149.99 (or around $160) and offer an HDMI connection at 4K resolution and 30fps, two USB 2.0 ports, a USB Type-C connection for the phone, an Ethernet port, and an embedded cooling fan. Because if you’re using your phone to power all the pixels in a desktop monitor, your phone is going to get hot.

Samsung probably should’ve thought about holding its Unpacked event a little sooner considering how many photos, videos, and marketing renders of the Galaxy S8 have already leaked. Evan Blass is back tonight — again — with more imagery of the flagship set to be unveiled on March 29th. He already revealed the three colors (black sky, orchid grey, and arctic silver) that the S8 will be offered in, and now we’re getting a better idea of how those colors look around back. They’re definitely subdued, but pretty nice.

Yeah, the fingerprint sensor is up next to the camera. Do you hate that? I think most people will get used to it after putting a fair number of index finger smudges on the camera lens. With all colors, the front of the phone is black. That’s a pretty smart choice on Samsung’s part to further keep your eyes off the already-tiny bezels at the top and bottom. (See, Apple? Make the front black.)

We’ve already gotten a good look at the Samsung Galaxy S8, but a new leaked image of the device shows off the colors that will be available when it ships to consumers in April.

Samsung will launch the phone during an event on March 29th, and it will reportedly be available to consumers on April 21st.

We’ve known for a while that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 is expected to come in two flavors: a regular version 5.7-inch display model and a massive 6.2-inch S8+. Now, thanks to a new batch of pictures from Slash Leaks we’ve finally gotten to see how the two phones match up side by side.

To put things in perspective, the smaller S8 on the left allegedly has a 5.7-inch display, the same size as last year’s ill-fated Galaxy Note 7, which makes the relative size of the 6.2-inch S8+ even more impressive. It’s yet another detail about the S8 that we can check off our list of questions, along with what it looks like, whether it’ll have buttons, and where the fingerprint sensor is.

Samsung is planning to launch its Galaxy S8 handset on March 29th, but we’ve already seen photos, videos, and even press images leak ahead of its debut. A fresh round of hands-on images have leaked today, and they give us a slightly better look at some big design changes Samsung is making to its 2017 flagship smartphone.

Slash Leaks has provided some close up images of the new on-screen home button for the Galaxy S8, and a good idea of just how small the front bezels are. They look incredibly small, which has clearly been aided by removing the physical home button from the front of the display. At the back of what is reportedly the larger Galaxy S8 Plus, you can see a separate sensor next to the camera that appears to be the fingerprint reader.

Evan Blass, professional spoiler of well kept smartphone secrets, is back with another hit today, this time revealing the most-anticipated non-iPhone of 2017, Samsung’s Galaxy S8. His new image reveals a handset that agrees wholeheartedly with Samsung’s Mobile World Congress teaser of a device with utterly minimal front bezels. It also features Samsung’s confirmed date for the launch, March 29th, and gives us a good look at what’s presumably going to be the lock screen welcoming new users when the phone is released in April.

Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S8 may be sitting out Mobile World Congress this year, but we’re still getting a good look at the upcoming smartphone this week, courtesy of a pair of leaked videos that show off the phone on film, as spotted by 9to5Google.

And yes, while we’ve seen pictures and renders of the S8 already, this is the first time it’s appeared on video, giving us a better look at how the bezel-reducing, edge-to-edge display looks in practical use (the answer is pretty good, by the way). Assuming the videos are real, they corroborate earlier images that showed off the S8’s updated design, including the switch from physical buttons to digital ones.

We’ve had quite a few leaks regarding Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, and now we’ve got our first sniff of a launch date. According to a report from ET News that cites a “high-ranking official for a mobile network provider,” Samsung will put the S8 on sale worldwide on April 21st. This will reportedly follow an unveiling of the phone in New York on March 29th — a date we’ve already seen reported by other sources.

If the leaks are to be believed we’ll see two new Galaxies in March — the S8 and S8+. The former is reported to have a 5.7-inch display, while the latter has a monstrous 6.2-inch screen. We’re also expecting a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera in each device. Other rumored specs include iris scanner functionality for the S8+ (first seen on the ill-fated Note 7) and the now-standard IP68 dust and water resistance on both devices. The main new feature of the S8 seems to be a buttonless design with slim bezels and rounded corners.

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is slated to arrive in late March, but details continue to leak in a steady stream in the lead up to the event. The latest dump of new info comes courtesy of VentureBeat’s Evan Blass, who posted the S8+ spec sheet on Twitter this afternoon. The thing that should pop out is the monstrous 6.2-inch display size.

Due to the S8’s rumored design, which drops physical buttons in favor of drastically reduced bezels, the phone may not be much larger than the Galaxy Note 7, which packed a 5.7-inch display into a 6.04-inch-tall device. Prior leaks containing photos of the device back up the idea that the S8 will pack an edge-to-edge display that allows for a drastic increase in screen real estate while retaining a relatively compact form.

We’re not expecting to see Samsung officially unveil its Galaxy S8 until late March, but as the big reveal gets closer, more leaks and details about the company’s next flagship smartphone continue to emerge. Today, a series of questionably-sourced images lend a bit more credence to Samsung getting rid of the S7’s physical home button and moving entirely to on-screen virtual buttons.

Ditching the actual button gave Samsung the freedom to design the S8 with an extremely minimal surrounding bezel at the top and bottom of the phone. (The side bezels had already reached "barely there" status on the S7 Edge.) The images appear to show the screen turned on, but I’m not entirely sold on that. The shots with Samsung’s always-on display (the big clock) seem realistic enough, but the main photo of the screen feels a little fake to me — more static demo unit than actual OLED display. Still, these shots align with a previous leak from VentureBeat. Those photos showed the S8 in silver, while these appear to be the black model (with a glossy black aluminum frame).

A leaked version of Samsung’s Secure Folder app for the Galaxy S7 has been making its way around the internet this morning. But alongside offering fingerprint security for a specific folder of apps and contacts, the leaked app might also have confirmed the design for Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8, as spotted by SamMobile.

The leaked image seems to confirm the various rumors about the S8, albeit in the broadest way possible — a buttonless design with dramatically reduced bezels, similar to leaked images from last month. And while we’ve seen hardware leaks of the alleged device already, this is the first time we’ve seen images from an official Samsung source.

Information about the upcoming Galaxy S8 keeps leaking out at a steady pace, and now The Guardian has published a considerable amount of info on the phone gleaned from unnamed sources. First off, the phone is supposed to be announced in late March, and then will ship in April, which matches other rumors we'd heard that the phone won't show up at MWC this year.

More controversially, The Guardian claims the S8 will have a headphone jack, citing "several sources," which contradicts a report from December that it would not. The new report does agree with the rumors about the "all-screen" design reported by Bloomberg last year.