Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 8 will be released at an event in New York in the third week of August, according to one industry insider that recently leaked a photograph of a supposed screen protector for the same device. If this leak is true, it would put the reveal just before the annual IFA event in Berlin, which will be starting on September 1. The insider was not clear about the nature of the event or venue, but given that it will take place in New York and mark a comeback for the Galaxy Note lineup after the fiasco surrounding the Galaxy Note 7, it’s likely to be similar to the Samsung Unpacked event that saw the Galaxy S8 series revealed back in March.
This leak gets a bit of a credibility boost in that it lines up with previous reports from South Korean news outlets, which allege that Samsung wants the Galaxy Note 8 to beat the newest Apple iPhone to market. If rumors of a major iPhone redesign are true, this would mean that Samsung has a fairly strong motivation to get the Galaxy Note 8 out to market before Apple’s latest device is out, especially if the two will be visually similar.
The Galaxy Note 7 will be making a comeback in South Korea this July as the Galaxy Note FE, according to reports from local news outlets. Samsung had previously stated that the refurbished device would miss some key markets like the US, meaning that the device will not get a chance to affect sales of its newer sibling, and will only be aimed at the biggest fans of the brand in Asia. Dedicated fans can currently only look to the aging Galaxy Note 5, which features the Exynos 7420 processor and 3GB of RAM, running roughly parallel to flagships powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor. The Galaxy Note 8’s rumored specs would make it a very significant upgrade for those consumers, with the phone reportedly running on the Snapdragon 836, a revised version of the Snapdragon 835. International Note fans, meanwhile, should reportedly expect to see the same Exynos 8895 processor that’s in the international version of the Galaxy S8.