14 DAY TRIAL // Apple brought a dual-camera system to the iPhone with the release of the iPhone 7 Plus in September 2016, and Samsung was expected to embrace this trend and do the same thing on the Galaxy S8 in the spring of this year.
Surprisingly, however, Samsung decided to stick with a single-lens camera, though several leaked prototypes have shown that the company actually considered going for a dual-camera configuration as well.
And new photos published on Weibo this morning confirm that Samsung created several S8 prototypes, some of which featured dual-camera systems plus a series of other changes that didn’t make it to the final production model.
No visible fingerprint sensor
As you can see for yourselves, the pictured Samsung Galaxy S8 prototype features vertical dual cameras, with the flash placed just under the camera cutout. The bigger surprise is that there is no fingerprint sensor on the back and since the front-facing home button is nowhere to be seen either, there’s a good chance this prototype came with a fingerprint reader embedded into this display.
This is one very mysterious feature that Samsung seems to have planned for a long time, with both the Galaxy S8 and the Note 8 expected to get it. In the end, however, it turns out that neither will feature a fingerprint sensor built into the screen, reportedly because this technology is not ready just yet, and Samsung wants to get it right before making it widely available on its devices.
The upcoming Galaxy Note 8, which is likely to launch in late August, is thus expected to come with the same fingerprint sensor as the Galaxy S8.
On the other hand, Apple seems to be in a more advanced development stage of its fingerprint sensor embedded into the screen, and the OLED iPhone 8 due in September is said to be the first model getting it. For Samsung, rumor has it that the new technology should be ready in time for the debut of the Galaxy S9 in the spring of the next year.
