With a good number of customers who bought its discontinued Galaxy Note 7 already having returned the device, Samsung is looking ahead as it seeks to quickly forget the dark days its latest premium smartphone brought.
Naturally, that means focusing all its internal resources on the next high-end smartphone. With the new year almost here, that means a new member of the Galaxy S series.
According to Reuters, Samsung has special plans in store for the Galaxy S8 when it launches next year.
The Galaxy S8 will reportedly feature Samsung’s own Artificial Intelligence-powered digital assistant along the lines of Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Assistant. And we really can’t doubt Samsung on this since the company announced early last month that it was acquiring Viv Labs, the makers of Siri.
Samsung plans to integrate Viv Labs’ Artificial Intelligence platform Viv into its Galaxy smartphones as well as other consumer electronics it makes like wearables and home appliances. This will bring the Korean giant to the same playing field that its rivals Google, Apple, Microsoft and even Amazon have been playing.
This news has led to some to speculate that the arrival of a digital assistant from Samsung baked into its Android smartphones may mean the death of the home button. Samsung has resisted the urge to do away with the home button for years even as Google shifted Android’s focus to on-screen navigation buttons and recently, Apple scrapped away much of the old feel of the physical home button leaving it as a button just in name.
