The list of features that Samsung may ditch on its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone grew longer on Thursday, with Bloomberg reporting that the flagship device will not have a physical home button, making room for a display that will fill the entire front side of the handset.
Citing people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported that the Galaxy S8 will have a virtual home button embedded in glass at the bottom of the phone, and its bezel-less display will offer more viewing real estate.
If the rumors are true, Samsung would be following in the footsteps of its archrival Apple. The iPhone 7 includes a Taptic home button; it looks the same as last year's, but it's a virtual rather than a physical button. Besides letting Samsung add new features to the home function (Apple, for instance, uses a version of Force Touch), removing the physical button means there is one less part of the phone to fail and require repair.
Other rumors suggest Samsung will axe the 3.5mm headphone jack and use the Galaxy S8 to debut a new personal voice assistant to rival Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.
Samsung is also planning to introduce more rigorous internal quality testing protocols with the Galaxy S8, according to Bloomberg. The Korean tech giant has remained silent on what caused its Galaxy Note 7 to catch fire and explode earlier this fall, prompting Samsung to issue a recall and cancel production of the device.
More rigorous testing could help the company's engineers catch issues like the one reported by an independent test this week, which found that the Note 7's design may have pinched its battery's internal components, causing them to overheat and explode.