Soon after various carriers confirmed the public launch of the Galaxy Note 8, a slew of new images of Samsung's upcoming phablet taken in the wild had appeared online.
The leaked images show a device that does not seem to deviate from our expectations radically, but there are three features that Forbes' contributor Ewan Spence believe is more or less confirmed.
Vital features
First off, and probably the most frustrating, is the fingerprint sensor. The internet has been rife with reports that suggest Samsung is following in Apple's footsteps and is hard at works on an under-glass fingerprint sensor, which will be nested on the front display.
Apparently, the experiments on the Galaxy Note 8 resulted in a noticeable color deformity, and so the technology has been held up to the presumptively dubbed Galaxy Note 9.
While Apple has ousted fingerprint sensor, Samsung seems in no mood of getting rid of the once popular feature.
Sticking to the design cues of the recently released Galaxy S8, the South Korean handset maker will be awkwardly placing the fingerprint sensor at the rear of the device just next to the camera lens set up.
Several Android manufacturers have adopted this option, and although it fits in with the Android ecosystem, it doesn't promote the Note 8 as having frontline solutions.
Other predicted changes
The Galaxy Note 8 is also expected to bring in a welcome change regarding design. The curved screen of the upcoming phablet will have smaller bezels at the top as well as the bottom that is located along the side of edge-to-edge Infinity Display.
The screen features fewer curves towards the edge. Despite the fact Samsung’s visual language is still there, the larger curved area on the Galaxy S8 and its bigger sibling the S8 Plus resulted in serious reflections and also distorted video and text.
The Note 8, on the other hand, is relatively sharper on its curve and offers bigger flat surface area without hampering the advantages of the curve. Spence deems this more practical.
Regarding optics, the latest leak confirms vertically positioned dual cameras. If this proves to be true, Samsung will be focusing more on special visual effects and photography rather than an AR (augmented reality) system. While it remains to be seen whether or not one of the cameras will be a fixed focus camera, recently surfaced documentation from Samsung Electro-Mechanics hints at four photographic abilities its camera is likely to have such as depth information, low light ability, and zoom, perspective.
Interestingly, the skills above align with the dual camera system touted in the latest leaked images.