We're starting to hear a few Galaxy S8 rumors well ahead of the usual Mobile World Congress-ish reveal for Samsung's flagship series (usually around late February or March). That may or may not have something to do with the phenomenal failure of the Galaxy Note 7, after which Samsung must be scrambling to shift potential customers' attention elsewhere. So we're treated with two somewhat credible pieces of Galaxy S8 info in a single week: one that Samsung will drop the headphone jack, and another that the company will finally release its deathgrip on physical home buttons.

The headphone jack might be dropped for the sake of engineering a thinner device, or just possibly out of a desire to copy the worst decision from the iPhone 7 or Moto Z. But getting rid of the front navigation cluster, as indicated in this Bloomberg report, makes a lot more sense. Not only would Samsung be aligning itself with the current display-focused design trend so dramatically demonstrated by the Xiaomi Mi Mix, it would also be an undeniable departure from the design decisions Samsung has been refusing to change since the Galaxy S II. There might be no better way to subtly shout at your users, "this phone will definitely not catch fire like the last one we made." SamMobile is claiming the same thing, also with anonymous sources.

Bloomberg goes into specifics, despite citing only "people with direct knowledge of the matter." The screen will reportedly be "bezel-less," presumably employing the double curve first used in the Galaxy S6 Edge, with a virtual home button on the bottom of the screen like Google's Nexus and Pixel phones. Keep in mind that dropping the home button would also mean moving the fingerprint reader, possibly to the rear of the device like many competing manufacturers do. The report also says Samsung's revised testing and quality assurance protocols will mean that the phone comes out in March or April, despite any urgency in the current design process. As always, consider these unverified reports rumors until more concrete evidence arrives.

Source: Bloomberg