A special edition of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 themed after the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie leaked online earlier today, having been shared by one known industry insider from China. The low-resolution image that can be seen above appears to depict a promotional poster for the device written in Mandarin Chinese, suggesting that the handset will at the very least be launched in the Far Eastern country. Whereas the next Star Wars movie is largely targeted at the U.S. audience, China has traditionally been one of the largest foreign markets of the long-running franchise, with The Force Awakens grossing over $124 million in the country, thus achieving the second largest overseas success after $163 million made in the U.K. That state of affairs makes China more than suitable for some limited edition collectibles like the newly leaked Galaxy Note 8 variant which is unlikely to make its way to many more markets, if any.
Chinese consumers are also more accepting of specially branded devices than their Western counterparts, with the largest smartphone market on the planet recently receiving some rather unique offerings of that kind. No official availability windows have been provided by the source, but it’s likely that the special edition of the Galaxy Note 8 will launch close to the release of the actual movie which is set to debut in China on January 5th. The device will presumably feature the same specs offered by the regular variant of the phablet, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 and 6GB of RAM, as well as 64GB of internal flash memory. Some of the previously introduced special editions of Samsung’s premium mobile offerings debuted with twice that storage space and while the newly leaked handset also appears to be a truly high-end collector’s item, the smartphone is already relatively expensive in China and it’s unlikely that Samsung will want to price out even more consumers out of purchasing it.
Originally launched in late summer, the Galaxy Note 8 is Samsung’s most powerful Android flagship to date and is expected to be one of the most commercially successful smartphones in 2017. The South Korean tech giant is presently preparing new premium devices in the form of the Galaxy S9 series that’s reportedly launching in early 2018.