Samsung holds phone, touts its new tablets
NEW YORK — Samsung’s product showcase yesterday was notable for what was missing: a new flagship phone.
Instead, Samsung spotlighted new Android and Windows tablets after delaying the Galaxy S8 smartphone — an indirect casualty of the unprecedented September recall of the fire-prone Note 7 phone. The new tablets will carry the Galaxy brand and come with many of the Note 7’s features, including the S Pen stylus and screens with rich colors.
Consumers will have to wait at least a few weeks longer for details on Samsung’s next major smartphone. That’s partly so that Samsung wouldn’t have to share the stage with its smartphone rivals at the Mobile World Congress trade show, which begins today in Barcelona, Spain. The delay also gives Samsung more time to make sure it has done everything right, given that any minor bug will surely draw outsized attention.
“The microscope is going to be firmly on Samsung,” said Geoff Blaber, an analyst with the research firm CCS Insight.
Samsung said the new tablets will go through extensive safety checks put in place after dozens of Note 7 phones overheated and in some cases exploded. Those incidents prompted aviation authorities to ban them on flights; Samsung eventually killed the product.
The absence of a new Samsung phone gives rivals a chance to shine.
LG, for instance, is pushing a G6 phone that is slightly smaller than the Note 7 but matches the doomed phone’s 5.7-inch screen size. LG is also matching major rivals in offering water and dust resistance, though in doing so, it got rid of an ability to replace the battery with a spare — a feature LG had long cited to set itself apart from rivals.
Meanwhile, Motorola has a new version of its midrange Moto G phone, while Chinese smartphone maker TCL is unveiling a BlackBerry Android phone with a physical keyboard after BlackBerry gave up on making hardware itself. And the classic Nokia 3310 phone from the year 2000 is coming back; although it’s not a smartphone, the device is popular for its durability.