The iPhone 8 will get its chance to shine soon enough, but the tech news cycle this past week was completely dominated by Samsung. This past Wednesday, the Korean-based tech giant officially unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, two stunning devices that may actually give Apple’s vaunted design team a run for its money.
Both the S8 and S8 Plus boast impressive specs, but we can’t help but focus on the eye-catching displays Samsung managed to engineer. Design wise, both devices feature minimal bezels which wrap around a curved and immersive Super AMOLED display. Appropriately, Samsung refers to the design as an “Infinity Display.” In effect, Samsung managed to incorporate an incredible amount of screen real estate into a relatively compact form factor. As a point of reference, the S8 display is about 18% larger than the S7 display.
On the other end of the smartphone spectrum, Apple is expected to launch a brand new redesign of its own later this year with the iPhone 8. Apple’s next-gen smartphone is said to feature an edge to edge OLED display, but one analyst believes that it still won’t be able to match what Samsung managed to pull off with its S8 lineup.
In a newly published research note (via The Street), JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall writes that while Apple’s iPhone 8 design might closely resemble Samsung’s S8 design, the display itself will be slightly less curved.
“While Apple’s new OLED form factor looks similar,” Hall writes, “current indications are for less use of curved OLED which may result in a slightly less ‘infinity’ screen form factor.”
Notably, Hall’s assessment aligns perfectly with a number of other reports we’ve seen spring up from the Apple rumor mill recently. Just two weeks ago, for example, the Nikkei Asian Review published a report claiming that the display on the iPhone 8 will feature a ‘gentler curve’ compared to Samsung’s smartphone lineup.
Having said that, the iPhone 8 may very well be the sleekest iPhone model we’ve seen yet, but it may not be able to match the “Infinity Display” Samsung wowed us with this week.
Still, don’t expect that to hamper iPhone 8 sales in the slightest. Remember that Apple hasn’t changed the iPhone form factor in nearly three years, which is to say that the iPhone 8 will likely trigger the largest iPhone refresh cycle in history.
