This Is The OTHER Galaxy S8

Each and every high profile smartphone gets a round of leaks and speculation before launch. Especially when you're as high-profile as the Samsung Galaxy S8. Some of those might have been just wishful thinking, but others turned out to be actually planned features that were later scrapped. Such is the case, for example, with the Galaxy S8's rumored dual cameras. Another photo of an abandoned prototype again "confirms" that this was a planned feature that, sadly, never saw the light of day.

Everyone's jumping on the dual camera train. Even Apple did with the iPhone 7 Plus. As such, it was expected that the Galaxy S8 this year would do likewise. Indeed, that was how the rumors went. So imagine the surprise and disappointment when the Galaxy S8 came with only one.

It wasn't a case of wishful thinking though. Apparently Samsung planned it as well, to the point that it even had actual working prototypes that had dual cameras, or at least had placeholders for them. We've seen evidence of those prototypes and this latest one, if accurate, pretty much cements the theory.

So why didn't the Galaxy S8 end up having two cameras on its back? That is still the unanswered mystery. There was little to no talk about Samsung having difficulties implementing such a technology, though that might also have been a cause. Although Samsung's smartphone cameras have been doing great recently, just having two of them doesn't necessarily mean they'll be twice as good as well.

It might also be tied with the abandoned on-screen fingerprint scanner, which did give Samsung some technical headaches. These prototypes show no physical home button or fingerprint scanner, implying that they were intended to sport the still absent feature. Perhaps when Samsung decided to forego that scanner and use a more conventional one, it had to make room for the sensor on the back, leading it to delay the dual camera feature for another model.

VIA: SamMobile