Samsung knows that they need to get the Samsung Galaxy S8, their next flagship device, absolutely spot on without any kind of hardware issues if the South Korean conglomerate were to be able to maintain their market share. More importantly, it would be the amount of trust that Samsung needs to gain after the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco which resulted in random explosions and a subsequent ban from all flights, not to mention seeing its production stopped.
As for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8, this would certainly be an inevitable smartphone release. It would be unthinkable of Samsung not to roll out their next flagship device after taking into account all that has happened to date, and one of the more interesting aspects of the upcoming Galaxy S8 would be whispers of Samsung debuting a virtual assistant on the device itself. In this potential revamp, Samsung might actually include a dedicated button just for this virtual assistant, or also known as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant. On the Apple platform of devices, they call it Siri, while Windows has Cortana. The whole reason for an AI assistant in the upcoming Galaxy S8? To act as a sweetener in order to pull folks back to Samsung’s net of devices.
The most recent internal prototypes of the flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone do happen to depict a button that is located on the side edge of the device. This would most probably see action as the button that will pull up the AI assistant as and when required, although one should always be very cautious to take note that whatever is a prototype is not a necessary and final reflection of the device, as things can and do change down the road.
Not only that, Samsung will have to make sure that the Samsung Galaxy S8 will not come with any of the design flaws that plagued its ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 that could spontaneously combust for no apparent reason. Some have pointed to the dual curved edges of the handset on both the front and the back, although nothing official has been confirmed by Samsung just yet.
We might actually see the Samsung Galaxy S8 get an announcement some time after Mobile World Congress that is happening in late February 2017, with April next year as a very possible release date. The reason for this would obviously be for Samsung to make sure that they strike all the right notes, pun not intended, in order to ensure a smooth release.
It would be interesting to see how tweaking the overall hardware design of the Galaxy S8 to accommodate a dedicated AI button will work out, if it turns out to be true. Apart from that, we have also received word that despite the Galaxy S8 being a flagship device when it arrives, it will not come with a 4K display -- which is somewhat of a letdown. We do hold out hope that this might change next spring though, since nothing has been officially confirmed or denied by the folks at Samsung just yet.
