In September 2016, Apple executives to the stage to unveil Apple’s next-generation iPhones, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. For the first time in nearly a decade of selling smartphones, Apple chose to reuse the same smartphone design for a third consecutive year; in the past, the company would introduce a brand new look every other year in order to keep things fresh. But since the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus would once again reuse the iPhone 6’s design from all the way back in 2014, Apple had to find other ways to make things more interesting. The company added a dual-lens camera to the Plus model, it doubled the amount of internal storage at each tier, and it added two new colors to its iPhone lineup, a stealth matte black and a stunning new “Jet Black” with a glossy, mirror-like finish.
It looked incredible. So Samsung promptly stole it. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before…
While there is precious little question that Samsung travels its own path more so now than it ever has in the past, some old habits are difficult to shake. Late last year, for example, it took the South Korean tech giant less than three months to steal the stunning Jet Black color Apple introduced in September. Samsung had made plenty of black phones before, of course, but it wasn’t until the new iPhones came along that the company added a glossy black option to its flagship smartphone lineup.
It looks like the response to Samsung’s take on Jet Black was positive, because the company seemingly plans to keep it in the mix this year when it unveils its hotly anticipated new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones less than two weeks from today. We saw a leaked Galaxy S8 mockup pop up earlier this week in a glossy black color, and now an even bigger leak shows Samsung’s next-generation flagship phone in Jet Black once again.
The images were posted on Weibo (via Slashleaks) and they show a handset that is once again believed to be a mockup. As a reminder, third parties use leaked schematics to build to-scale models of unreleased Apple and Samsung smartphones using real materials, and these photos are believed to show one such model.
Additional photos of the Jet Black Galaxy S8 dummy follow below, and hopefully they can help tide Android fans over for another two weeks until Samsung finally unveils its new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones on March 29th.
