Samsung reportedly plans April launch for the Galaxy S8 in New York

Samsung is planning to eschew its usual February launch of the latest Galaxy S flagship, according to a report in Korean publication Naver (via SamMobile), opting instead to bump the introduction back to April. And whereas the launch event is usually held in Barcelona, Spain to coincide with the industry’s premiere Mobile World Congress trade show, the Galaxy S8 will reportedly be unveiled in New York City, instead.

Naver cites as its source people who attended an executive meeting at Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon, South Korea on Monday, where long-term mobile strategy was being discussed.

The main reason for this delay is that the Galaxy S8 will be the company’s first major handset release following the disastrous, aborted third quarter launch of the Galaxy Note7. Samsung was forced to recall the entire initial production run of Note7s following reports of exploding and inflammable units, only to cancel the device entirely when some replacement units were found to exhibit the same dangerous behavior.

Therefore, Samsung is said to be taking extra time to perform quality assurance testing on this critical product, whose performance in the market will be even more crucial than usual to the success of the company as a whole.

The Galaxy S8 has previously been reported to sport a completely redesigned appearance, whose signature feature will allegedly be a display that occupies nearly the entire face of the phone — making it the first Galaxy S handset to ditch a physical home button for on-screen navigation controls. Furthermore, like the Note7, the S8 will reportedly come in just a single design (in two screen sizes), with the display wrapping around the sides of the device in what has traditionally been known as Samsung’s Edge series.