Earlier this year, Samsung confirmed that it’s working on a Galaxy Note 8 that will be better and safer than its predecessor. That was a clear indication Samsung would not abandon the Note brand after the Galaxy Note 7 battery disaster. But there is still some question as to when Samsung will actually announce and release the new Note 8.
Samsung may have blamed the structural integrity of its Galaxy Note 7 batteries for the fires, but that’s only part of the story. Samsung’s ambitions to have a significantly bigger battery inside the Galaxy Note 7, and to launch the product a lot earlier than the iPhone 7 series, were both factors that contributed to the phablet’s demise.
With that in mind, we can’t help but wonder how Samsung will handle this year’s Galaxy Note 8 launch.
IFA Executive Director Jens Heithecker told reporters on Saturday that he’d like to see the Galaxy Note 8 unveiled at IFA 2017 in Berlin. The original Note was unveiled at IFA 2011, and Samsung chose the same consumer electronics event to launch the Note 2, 3, and 4 in the years that followed. Then, Samsung went for standalone shows for the Note 5 and Note 7, as it tried to better position the phone’s launch to compete against Apple’s iPhones.
“My personal perspective is that IFA would be the better place (to unveil the new Note smartphone),” Heithecker said at an IFA press conference, according to The Korea Times. “The big advantage is that we have a lot of media and journalists from all around the world in Berlin. It is not possible to bring them all together in other cities wherever it is, in August. That’s our offer.”
The exec added that Samsung will have the biggest presentation at the event, scheduled for September 1-6, without providing any details about it.
Apple will probably unveil its new iPhone 8 and iPhone 7s phones during the second week of September. It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung chooses to compete against the iPhone this year. Some Galaxy Note 8 reports claim the phone is already in the making, and that Samsung is eying a fourth-quarter launch.
