This is pretty nuts. And exciting. It's nuts-exciting. Is that a thing? It is now.
Samsung is apprently working on a Galaxy S8 Mini; a new variant of the existing Galaxy S8 flagship. We've had the Galaxy S8 and larger Galaxy S8+, but now a third, smaller sized model is allegedly in development.
Samsung hasn't produced a "Mini" variant of its Galaxy S flagship line for a while, not since the Galaxy S5 series, in fact; which was thee years ago now. Essentially it hasn't made one since the poorly received Galaxy S5 forced its design change, which saw the creation of the Galaxy S6, which has in turn set the tone of the design ever since.
But now rumours have emerged that Samsung has finally returned to the "Mini" form factor for its latest Galaxy S8 series, with the word of such a device in development coming from Chinese tech news source ITHome. Naturally we'd suggest taking this all with a pinch or two of salty goodness, but for now it's an intiguing prospect nonetheless.
According to the details, the Galaxy S8 Mini will feature a 5.3in touch display crammed into the same bodyshell design as the Galaxy S8, though smaller; this will include the curved-edge design which will make things feel more compact. Apparenly it will retain the 18.5:9 wide-aspect ratio and all together this will make the cell phone battery wholesale feel more like a 4.7in handset. There's no word on the display spec, but being curved OLED it will likely be Super AMOLED.
It seems specs wise Samsung may be positioning the handset to be a little more affordable (or perhaps to run cooler in the smaller bodywork) with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor rather than the Snapdragon 835 found in the regular Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. It will also have 4GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, as well as an Iris Scanner. Still, despite the downgrade don't expect this to be cheap!
There's no word on whether or not the handset will feature Bixby, or what camera and battery hardware will be built-in.
There's also no indication on when it might be released. Currently it's thought the Galaxy Note 8 will launch in September, so feasibly it could launch alongside, although in the past the Galaxy Note series has not shared the limelight with other handsets. It also seems to me that there's a limited window for Samsung to launch such a wholesale iPhone parts (with lower tier specs, no less) and for it to have market relevance. Any later than September and it'll be quickly getting ousted by the Galaxy S9 launching in Q1 of 2018. So, essentially, if Samsung doesn't launch it REALLY soon, there's no point in it doing so at all, in my opinion.
We'll keep an eye out for more and will update accordingly as and when we hear it. Stay tuned.
