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Samsung has unveiled its Galaxy S8 flagship smartphone as it battles to regain the market leadership it lost to Apple after the embarrassing withdrawal of the Note 7s.
Boasting some of the largest wrap-around screens ever made and a new voice assistant, but no home button, the S8 is the South Korean technology company's first new premium phone since its September recall of all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones equipped with fire-prone batteries. Samsung halted their sales in 10 markets, and the phones were banned from aircraft in the United States.
Two versions of the Galaxy S8 have been launched in New York, with 6.2-inch (15.75cm) and 5.8-inch curved screens - the largest to date for Samsung's premium smartphones.
They will go on sale from April 21.
"We must be bold enough to step into the unknown and humble enough to learn from our mistakes," DJ Koh, the company's mobile chief, said.
He acknowledged that it had been a challenging year for Samsung. The Note debacle cost the company at least $5 billion.
In short, the company needs this phone to be the moment consumers and analysts stop talking about its batteries.
Let's keep talking about batteries
Samsung is hoping the design update and the new features, focused on making life easier for consumers, will be enough to revive sales in a year Apple is expected to introduce major changes to its iPhones, including the very curved screens that have become staples of the Galaxy brand.
The S8 is also crucial for Samsung's image as a maker of reliable mobile devices. The self-combusting Galaxy Note 7s had to be scrapped in October just two months after their launch, and the recall was particularly damaging, investors and analysts said.
"The Galaxy S8 is the most important phone for Samsung in a decade and every aspect will be under the microscope following the Note 7 recall," said Ben Wood, a smartphone industry analyst with UK-based CCS Insight.
But while the phone's sizes are increasing, their battery capacity is not. Samsung had pushed the engineering envelope with the Note 7 battery, which contributed to spontaneous combustions.
Samsung has blamed the Note 7 fires on multiple design and manufacturing defects in its batteries. Inspectors concluded some of the batteries were too small for their capacity, putting pressure on the internal structure.
The company says phones will now go through multiple inspections, including X-rays and stress tests at extreme temperatures.
Samsung has enlarged the screen by minimising the frame, or bezel, surrounding the display. Gone is a horizontal strip with the home button at the bottom. Instead, a virtual home button is embedded in the display and the fingerprint sensor is moved to the back.
Hello, Bixby
The S8 features Samsung's new artificial intelligence service, Bixby, with functions including a voice-commanded assistant system similar to Apple's Siri. There is also a new facial recognition application that lets users unlock their phones by looking at them.
Samsung claims Bixby will do much more than rivals from Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. For one thing, Samsung says Bixby will be able to handle any smartphone task currently managed by touch.
When viewing a photo, just say "send this to Bob" to pull up messaging options and contact information for the Bobs you know.
But there's a major caveat: Bixby will work only with selected Samsung apps, including the photo gallery and messages, along with Google Play Music. Not all touch commands will have voice counterparts right away.
Other apps will be able to adopt Bixby, but Samsung has had a mixed track record in getting other companies to support its home-brewed functions, such as an "Air View" feature for showing pop-up previews of content. Never seen it? Exactly.
"I think the brand will struggle to compete in the longer term with the broader digital ecosystems from Google, Amazon or Apple," Forrester analyst Thomas Husson said.
Anything else?
Samsung's virtual-reality camera, Gear 360, will now accommodate a higher resolution, known as 4K, and work with iPhones, not just Samsung phones.
An optional docking station will turn the S8 phone into a desktop computer when connected to a regular TV. In that mode, users will be able to resize windows and work with several apps at once. It's similar to what Microsoft offers on its Windows 10 phones.
Samsung also unveiled a router that doubles as a hub for internet-connected appliances and lights.
Samsung said its previously announced Gear VR headset upgrade, which will now include a hand-held controller, will go on sale in April.
Reuters/AP
Topics: mobile-phones, company-news, korea-republic-of
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