Samsung Electronics may still launch the Galaxy Note 8 at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) Berlin trade show in September, industry sources said earlier this week. Organizers of the event previously publicly called for the South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to announce its latest Android flagship at their show, though recent reports indicated that Samsung is looking to reveal the device at an earlier date due to its desire to launch the phablet by mid-September and beat the Apple iPhone 8 series to the market. The source of the latest rumor was relatively confident that the Galaxy Note 8 will be announced at IFA Berlin 2017, though they added that the company may reveal some details about the phone before that event.
The upcoming Berlin-based trade show runs from September 1 to September 6 and if Samsung is truly planning to launch the Galaxy Note 8 at the event, it will probably do so at a press conference in the run-up to the actual show, then give visitors a chance to go hands-on with the device in the next six days. The Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer has a long history of announcing new Galaxy Note-series smartphones at IFA Berlin, having only broken that tradition once when it unveiled the Galaxy Note 7 at a separate event on August 19, 2016. In light of the fact that the firm isn’t likely to unveil the Gear S4 lineup at IFA Berlin yet is still expected to arrive in Germany with a new flagship product, it’s possible that the Galaxy Note 8 won’t be announced until the trade show.
Apart from rumors claiming that the Galaxy Note 8 will launch in mid-August like its predecessor did, other recent reports indicated that the handset will debut in late August, which doesn’t exclude an IFA Berlin announcement. Unveiling a device a day or two before a major trade show while still attributing its launch to the related event is a common industry practice and one that Samsung itself has often employed in the past with IFA Berlin, Mobile World Congress (MWC), and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). More details on the Galaxy Note 8 are expected to follow in the coming weeks.