After the Note 7 palaver, Rob Leedham believes Samsun has made the hottest phone in the world a ain. Only not literally this time…

onsidering its last big phone was prone to explosions, Samsung needs the S8 to be spectacular. Not just ‘quite good’ or ‘kind of alright’, but amazing enough to eradicate the memory of that combustible catastrophe. Here’s why we reckon it might just do the job…

As per usual, Samsung is making two versions of its top phone. This time, both Androids have an enormous curved screen. The standard Galaxy S8 has a 5.8in display, while its even more massive brother the S8+ gives you 6.2in. Thanks to new screen technology that allows for smaller bezels than ever before, neither handset will be a faff to wedge into one of your jeans pockets.

If you’re looking at the S8 and wondering where its home button is, then squinting ain’t gonna resurrect it. It’s been replaced with a virtual home button on the touchscreen and a fingerprint scanner that sits next to the camera on the back. Thanks to the S8’s always-on and iris-scanning smarts, using it shouldn’t be too taxing. Anyway, you should get used to this button-free visage – Apple is set to pull off the same trick next time out. Despite Apple, Huawei and LG all jumping on the dual-lens bandwagon, Samsung is sticking with a single 12MP affair with super-accurate dual-pixel autofocus. That means no optical zooming or wide-angle shenanigans, but you should still be getting one of the best cameras around. A year on from its launch, the Galaxy S7’s pictorial prowess is only rivalled by Google’s Pixel and the iphone 7 Plus. We expect the S8 to be just as impressive.

If you live in Europe, the S8 will feature Samsung’s new Exynos 8895 processor. Elsewhere it’s likely to come with the latest Snapdragon 835 chip. With such a huge screen to power, both processors will have to be efficient to serve up a respectable amount of battery life. About a day and a half is the standard for top-end phones.

Clearly, with a beautiful curved screen, a camera that’s expected to compete with the very best and a super-fast processor, the Galaxy S8 will be a standout phone in 2017. Oh, and it’s keeping the headphone jack, so you won’t have to splash out on Bluetooth buds. That’s just as well, given the S8 is all set to be one of the most expensive phones you can buy.