Up until now, most of the leaked renders we've seen of the Galaxy S8 have either been speculative or based on cases and screen protectors reportedly designed for Samsung's upcoming phone. But we may have finally gotten a look at the real McCoy.
Why so confident? Consider the source of this latest leaked image — VentureBeat's Evan Blass, who has a pretty good track record when it comes to revealing details about unannounced smartphones. Blass posted the image to Twitter, along with a March 29 date for the Galaxy S8's unveiling.
The image pretty much matches what we've heard in all the rumors about the Galaxy S8 — namely that the front of the phone will feature an edge-to-edge screen with the curved display going down both sides of the S8. The navigational buttons found on the Galaxy S7 are gone, while the back of the phone features a fingerprint reader next to the rear camera.
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A lot of Blass's report on the Galaxy S8 matches what The Guardian posted earlier this week, particularly in regards to the S8's newfound iris scanning features and the so-called "infinity display" that will stretch across the front of the phone. That means 5.8- and 6.2-inch displays on the two Galaxy models, Blass says.
We'll apparently know for sure if this really is what the Galaxy S8 looks like by the end of March. Blass says the phone will be unveiled at an event in New York on March 29, with the phone going on sale in April. Earlier rumors had Samsung waiting until April to unveil the phone. In either case, the S8 debuts later than previous models, which Blass attributes to Samsung taking its time in the wake of the botched Galaxy Note 7 launch.
Samsung has already confirmed that it won't unveil the Galaxy S8 during February's Mobile World Congress.
There's more to Blass's report than just a leaked phone image. He also lists some of the purported specs on the Galaxy S8. As others have reported, the phone looks like it will run on the Snapdragon 835 processor, at least in markets where the phone doesn't use Samsung's own Exynos CPU instead. The Qualcomm chip reportedly consumes less power than the one in last year's Galaxy S7, which is important since the larger displays are going to need more power. Blass reports that Samsung will go with 3000 and 3500 mAh batteries in the 5.8- and 6.2-inch models of the phone, respectively.
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Other features in the Galaxy S8, according to Blass's report: It will ship with 4GB of RAM, offer 64GB of storage (with a microSD slot letting you add another 256GB) and, yes, include a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The camera in the S8 apparently won't see any major improvements to its hardware, but Blass reports that software will let the camera do image recognition to help you with searches. He also expects the Galaxy line to feature pressure-sensitive touch screens similar to the 3D Touch feature Apple added to its smartphones starting with the iPhone 6s.
You might wind up paying more for all those features, though. Blass says that Galaxy S8 will cost €100 more than last year's models in Europe. It's unclear how that will translate to U.S. pricing, though.
