Galaxy S8 rumor roundup: no headphone jack, potential early launch and surfaced codenames

With the Galaxy Note 7, LG V20, Moto Z , Sony’s latest and even the iPhone 7 officially unveiled, the 2016 season is quickly coming to an end — save for those sweet Google Pixel phones. And while the comapny isn’t an a pleasant situation due to the faulty nature of the Note 7’s battery, Samsung’s name is also being tossed around with some speculation regarding its 2017 flagship, the Galaxy S8…

We reported earlier this week that the Korean giant is rumored to pull a Note 7 on the Galaxy S line up and go all-in with the now-signature dual edge panel, completely ditching the flat displays even in the smaller of the two rumored models, but SamMobile is now disclosing some additional information regarding a few things about the device.

First, we may have “official” codenames: apparently, the Galaxy S8 (and its bigger brother, which we will call Galaxy S8 “Plus” for the sake of convenience) are rumored to be called “Dream” and “Dream2” internally; if anything, considering that by the time these devices come out it will have been a full two years for Samsung’s flagships without undergoing a major redesign and that long time rival Apple is rumored to notably overhaul the iPhone next year, it’s no wonder that Android‘s biggest manufacturer may be planning to do something big as well.

As far as model numbers go, instead, SM-G95o and SM-G955 are being thrown around, with a little explanation that tells us why Samsung‘s naming makes sense; as it turns out, tetrophobia (aka “the practice of associating the number 4 with bad luck”) is a thing in South Korea. Therefore, although Samsung usually jumps ten numbers when moving to a phone’s successor, the Galaxy S7’s SM-G930 are being bumped by twenty units (the Galaxy SIII was model GT-I9300, while the S4 carried the GT-I9500 number, supposedly for the same reason).

Speaking of Samsung’s relentless chase of Cupertino’s firm, however, some additional — and potentially unwelcomed — changes are rumored to be debuting along the Korean behemoth’s next high-end device. Allegedly, not only is Samsung ready to follow suit and ditch the headphone jack (ugh), but it’s also working on its own proprietary port to replace it. I can’t wait to see consumers happily joining the Adapter Party and rejoicing about headphones being marketed with the standard jack, Lightning, USB-C and now even Samsung’s own option (which, despite having far less leverage than Apple, could easily undercut their licensing fee and tempt manufacturers to join the club). Hopefully that won’t be the case, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Last but not least is the phone’s launch window; following the Note 7 debacle, some analysts are speculating that the phone will purportedly see a slightly moved up launch date, as to more rapidly restore lost customer trust by offering a new and “flawless” device as soon as possible. Samsung already uses the week before Mobile World Congress to present its newest phone — that is to say, pretty early — so we’ll see with that too.