While it remains unclear if there will ever be a Galaxy Note 8 after the Note 7 fiasco, perhaps a late 2017 high-end Samsung phablet with a different name, or just one flagship model for all of next year, the company need’s to hit the bulls eye with the S8 to make a comeback.

After the whole tragedy about Note 7 started, Samsung has been facing some very serious times. What is even more haunting is the fact that the company still has no idea what caused the Note 7 Explosions in the first place. Samsung has maintained the strategy of releasing two high end devices each year. Starting with the S Series flagship, we see the release of a Note device in the last quarter. This time, things will and have to be different. Currently, S7 is taking all the Note 7 pressure of keeping up as a flagship, this will soon be passed onto the S8, which many are speculating will have an early release in 2017.

It makes perfect sense to speed up the research and development of the “next big thing”. The GS7 and S7 Edge are rapidly losing steam, the iPhone 7 is proving a larger success than anticipated and there’s a new player in town, the Pixel.

Behind-the-scenes look at the Note 7 comedy of errors suggests haste was primarily what got the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer into this mess in the first place. Not only did Samsung rush the iris-scanning phablet to the market to beat the potentially disappointing iPhone 7.

There were several things that Samsung could’ve done to prevent this downfall. After initial reports of explosions started flooding in, Samsung could’ve been more transparent of its investigation, and possibly even open-sourced it, if they were unable to do it in-house. Instead of a hasty recall on its own, the company should’ve roped in the Consumer Product Safety Commission for a thorough investigation before taking a step in any direction.

All of Samsung’s engineers are working hard to solve the puzzle, including the Galaxy S8 development team, and this has delayed work on the S series flagship by two weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports. This delay isn’t too much of a stretch, but assuming that Samsung would want to be absolutely sure that the Galaxy S8 checks all the safety boxes, it will take its time to ensure that the ‘S’ series does not get hit as hard as its Note series did.

As for the Samsung Galaxy S8, it was rumoured to launch on February 26, but may now be delayed.

While the decision to abort the Note 7 has halted the damage for now, analysts have raised questions about the future of the Galaxy Note series, arguing that the brand has become too tarnished by the crisis and that the company should retire it altogether.

Source: The Wall Street Journal