It looks like Samsung may be looking to bolster its smartphone lineup with a revised version of last year’s Samsung Galaxy S8.
Samsung used part of its financial report for the first quarter of 2018 to warn investors that there’s a smartphone market slump on the horizon — warnings that seem to have been proven correct by a marked decline in global sales of smartphones. With Samsung’s apparent clarity on the subject, it doesn’t seem surprising that the company is trying something new to mix up its offerings and try to reinforce its position as one of the
Design
It seems that Samsung had a whole lot of
So if you’re a fan of the
The recycling of the S8’s design isn’t a terrible choice by any means — Samsung lifted most of the same design choices for this year’s Galaxy S9 — but it’s still a tad disappointing to see the return of the fingerprint sensor to the side of the
The display will be a 5.8-inch Infinity Display, as mentioned, and will presumably still be an AMOLED screen in order to achieve the Galaxy series’ celebrated curve. There have been some cutbacks made to the screen’s resolution however, with the S8 Lite only being able to display up to 2220 x 1080 — but that’s still sharp enough for most people.
The heart rate sensor from the
Specs
While rumors about the design of the S8 Lite leave the outside of the phone relatively unchanged, the whispers about the internals point to more drastic changes from the original S8.
While rumors say that the S8 Lite will be packing the same 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage space from the standard S8, the central processing unit will be changing from the Snapdragon 835 to a Snapdragon 660. That’s not likely to be as dramatic a drop in performance as the numbers might suggest — the Nokia 7 Plus uses the Snapdragon 660, and we found the performance on that snappy enough. While you’re not going to get the same level of speed as you would with a Snapdragon 835, we anticipate that the Snapdragon 660 should perform admirably — and provide some additional battery life thanks to its power efficiency.
Speaking of the battery, those same rumors say the S8 Lite will come with a 3,000mAh battery — the same as the standard S8. With so much staying the same, these whispers do seem likely.
Camera
At this time, most leaks point at the S8 Lite coming with a 16MP camera mounted on the rear — which may well be an upgrade from the
We always enjoy testing Samsung’s camera tech, and we look forward to giving the S8 Lite’s camera a spin.
Release
There is no solid information on whether this phone will launch in the U.S. — Samsung hasn’t even tehcnically admitted it exists yet — but leaks point to the phone being released in China on May 21. Pricing is another finicky area — but with the