14 DAY TRIAL // We're still months away from the reveal of the Galaxy S8, but we've already had quite a lot of unverified information suggesting that Samsung plans to completely overhaul the Galaxy S series beginning next year.
The Galaxy S8 should be as revolutionary as the Galaxy S III was many years ago, but in order for Samsung to succeed, the South Korean company needs to innovate heavily.
As many of you probably know by now, Samsung's semiconductor division has been growing steadily in the last couple of years thanks to the fact that it has become the main supplier for major companies like Apple.
The Exynos chipset developed in-house by Samsung has been used in the company's smartphones for a long time now. It has become the norm for the South Korean company to launch two versions of its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagship with different chipsets inside: Qualcomm and Exynos.
But that might change in a year or two, as Samsung plans to develop a powerful Exynos chipset that will include the so-called Shannon 359 modem.
Although the company has been using Shannon modems in its smartphones for a long time, they haven't been so advanced as the latest version.
According to a new report, Shannon 359 modem will support just about all the network basebands in the world: FDD-LTE, TD-LTE, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA, CDMA2000, CDMA, and GSM.
Samsung's flagships won't include the Shannon 359 modem until 2018
However, the Shannon 359 won't be released until Q3 2017, which means the upcoming Galaxy S8 won't benefit from its wide network support.
Sources in China claim the modem can be used as a plug-in component on the chipsets, so even if it doesn't become part of the next Exynos chipset, it will surely be added as soon as Samsung can mass produce it.
Since the Shannon 359 modem won't be available until Q3 2017, it's more likely that it will be integrated inside the Exynos 10 in 2018, if Samsung plans to continue to launch its own chipsets.
Basically, the launch of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 won't be affected by the upcoming release of the Shannon 359 modem, but both flagships are now said to include Samsung's unannounced Exynos 9 chipset, instead of the rumored Exynos 8890.