Samsung Galaxy S8 front to be almost bezel-less says Bloomberg

[HEXUS]

Samsung's physical home button is to be replaced by embedded "virtual home button".

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[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Which makes them even less practical since if you actually get a case which has protection the screen gets covered,yet at the same time the expansive glass front makes the phone more fragile. Then you have the other issue of actually holding them - people with thick fingers are going to just have a really great time with them.

Also,lets make them so thin there is hardly enough space for a decent battery and a design which can dissapate heat properly.

Style over substance and practicality it seems nowadays.

Edit!!

Also ditch the headphone socket so you need to buy bulkier adaptors,or overpriced wireless headphones which need more bulky bits for charging,etc. Plus when the integrated batteries on those swish compact in-ear wireless headphones go,you chuck them and buy a new one.

[sedontane]

Took the words out of my mouth CAT-THE-FIFTH

[Andy14]

All trying to preempt and beat to market a phone that hasn't even been announced yet.

Would be quite amusing if Samsung rushed into this and then Apple made a 7s & 7s+ based on the current design...

[abychristy]

Which makes them even less practical since if you actually get a case which has protection the screen gets covered,yet at the same time the expansive glass front makes the phone more fragile. Then you have the other issue of actually holding them - people with thick fingers are going to just have a really great time with them.

Also,lets make them so thin there is hardly enough space for a decent battery and a design which can dissapate heat properly.

Style over substance and practicality it seems nowadays.

Edit!!

Also ditch the headphone socket so you need to buy bulkier adaptors,or overpriced wireless headphones which need more bulky bits for charging,etc. Plus when the integrated batteries on those swish compact in-ear wireless headphones go,you chuck them and buy a new one.

Also make it in such a way that you can't go without buying a protective case for it.

[jag272]

Well, not that I'm their target market anyway since I can't afford their flagship phones, but the Edge only availability and the dropping of the headphone jack are both enough to take this phone out of the running for me.

Maybe it's because I haven't used one and therefore lack experience, but the idea of the Edge phones has always seemed strange to me, much prefer having the so called "vanilla" experience.

As for headphone jack I admittedly don't play music via my phone as much as I used to, but I would still much prefer an actual headphone jack as opposed to doubling up the USB C

[3dcandy]

Don't like the removal of the headphone socket but then I thought about how often I use it and the answer is very rarely...
The home button - kinda meh. Will make useage much harder not easier

[Tunnah]

Cat you have to remember the type of person this phone is for - people who use it as a status symbol. They're not gonna hide it with a case, they're not gonna use headphones with it, they're gonna have it out as much as possible.

Practicality goes out the window with status objects

[Dashers]

I liked the Galaxy S2. It provided good bang for your buck, and the mrs is still rocking it. It was let down by the flimsy back and easy to scratch camera lens. It took me a while to get used to the shear size of a 4.2" screen, and I almost took it back due to the difficulty of using it one handed, but it was just about tolerable but holding it securely was no longer possible.

I'm now on an Xperia Z3 Compact. All the features of the Z3 flagship, just with a smaller screen. Can't change the battery, which might bite me, but I've had it since launch and the battery still seems healthy. Waterproof too.

But they're all still plagued with buggy firmware and compatibility issues. As soon as you want to update your OS you can bet on at least one thing going wrong (my Sony can no longer copy large files over wireless without knackering up).

I read an interesting article a while ago about saturation point of the mobile market. We're pretty much at the point where there is nothing to distinguish between the models, there is no room left to innovate. At which point it'll become a race to the bottom. Hopefully they will become white-label devices with open driver implementations and just a case of slapping on the OS of your choice. A bit like PCs.

[Xlucine]

I was going to hold out for the note 8 in the hopes it would clone my note 2, but now that I might have to give up screen space for a set of buttons I'm less certain. Having a physical home button was one of the reasons I was planning to stick to samsung, no buttons and no headphone jack would be enough for me to jump ship

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cat you have to remember the type of person this phone is for - people who use it as a status symbol. They're not gonna hide it with a case, they're not gonna use headphones with it, they're gonna have it out as much as possible.

Practicality goes out the window with status objects

Probably with a big crack on the screen within the first month of usage!!

[MonkeyKing1969]

The big downside for me is really the hope for a better speaker. The no bezle means the speakers till on the bottom...which is not the end of the world. It will be weaker than it could have been, but ist all a trade off. All the other issues...meh. My S3 served me well, and my S5 was a excellent until I dropped it one too many times. I like the Samsung phones, not so much I would not consider anything else but I like them.

[kalniel]

Won't they get sued by Apple? If Apple can patent rectangles I'm sure they've managed to get one on the absence of a headphone jack

[3dcandy]

Won't they get sued by Apple? If Apple can patent rectangles I'm sure they've managed to get one on the absence of a headphone jack

A few beat Apple to no headphone socket so I doubt it. It also appears Samsung are winning the current litigation slugfest

[kalniel]

A few beat Apple to no headphone socket so I doubt it.

I thought the same about rectangles too, to be honest...

[TooNice]

I have been fine without a protective case all these years, and it has never been a big deal (watch me jinx myself and smash my several months old S7).

That said, Zero Lemon made a battery case for the S7 Edge, was there any problem with the screen being covered? Now that I think about it, if I remember right, they didn't bother releasing a vanilla S7 in Japan, so they have already tested this strategy. Personally I like the borderless screen, but I simply do not need a phone (screen) that big (I'll take a bigger battery though).

My biggest issue is the ditching of the earphone socket. I want to be able to use the earphones I have carefully picked and not be limited to options that might not be as good as whar I have and most definitely will be more expensive. Given some of the ridicule Apple got for that decision, I am a bit surprised that they are following suit. No mention of microSD either (can't take it for granted since they took it out once).