Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 could sport a front panel that would bring the screen-to-body ratio to 90%

If there’s one thing that’s sure over at Samsung‘s headquarters, it’s that after the Galaxy Note 7‘s debacle the company will really need to nail it when the time for its next flagship smartphone comes. The firm’s engineers and designers are hard at work to bring the Galaxy S8 on time — and safely — and some more information may help us paint a clearer picture of what’s to come…

With the recent announcement of its stunning Mi Mix, Xiaomi corroborated the theory that smartphones have reached a peak point and that there’s indeed a need to look forward, whether it be via modularity, crazy flexible displays or, perhaps more simply, edgeless panels.

Samsung’s R&D labs are likely prototyping each and every one of the aforementioned technologies, and then some; however, while some may still take a few years before actually making to the market, the very next Galaxy S handset could already benefit from the bezel-less design offered by Samsung Display’s latest creation.

A report from The Investor is claiming that, in fact, the rumored 5.5″ 4K screen set to debut with the Galaxy S8 could very well allow the overall phone’s dimensions to feature a stunning body-to-screen ratio of 90% — and this could indeed be what VP Lee Kyeong-tae was hinting at speaking to the WSJ a few days ago.

“Samsung Display would roll out a full-screen display whose display area ratio (a scale that measures space taken up by a display on the front part of a handset) reaches more than 90 percent next year,” said Park Won-sang, a principal engineer at the display-making unit of Samsung, during the iMiD 2016 display exhibition in Seoul last week.

Such a drastic design innovation would mean that the famous physical home button would have to go away, leaving either a back sensor (a la Pixel Imprint) or optical fingerprint recognition as viable alternatives — and considering that during his presentation Won-sang showed a hypothetical S7 edge with no front button and sensors (saying that they could be replaced with new versions built right into the panel) we’d tend to believe that Samsung’s aiming at the latter.

This much is certain: between Google’s hard push into the high-end consumer electronics market and Apple‘s big iPhone redesign (which somewhat echoes what we’re hearing here, apropos), Samsung’s stakes are even higher for next year, so we can (and should) prepare for things to heat up. Hopefully this time they will at least not explode.