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Yous tin can usually recognize a Samsung phone, fifty-fifty from a distance. Well, or a telephone that'due south trying really hard to look like a Samsung telephone. Starting with the Milky way S3, Samsung standardized its button design with a large physical home button and two backlit capacitive navigation keys below the screen. The Galaxy S8 is expected to change that upward with on-screen buttons, and yous might even be able to change the order of them.

While most Android phones have the dorsum button to the left of home and an overview button to the right, Samsung does information technology the other style around. With the GS8's on-screen buttons, you should be able to alter that. This is non an outlandish idea in the grand scheme of Android — phones from companies like LG and OnePlus allow you lot to edit the on-screen navigation buttons. It's a big pace for Samsung, which has held firm to this part of its make identity.

This news comes by way of yet another leak of the Galaxy S8. The images of the Galaxy S8 evidence the screen on with the new navigation buttons visible. Samsung'southward icons are a piffling… weird. The phone above is rotated landscape, but the order of the buttons doesn't change when you do that. They're in the traditional Android order of back, domicile, overview. And then, maybe Samsung is just doing information technology that way now? Nope, at that place's a second telephone in the image; it's upside down, merely the button society is clearly the other mode around (overview, home, back). There's probably a toggle in the software.

The buttons in Samsung's traditional order.

This tells us that Samsung is taking this opportunity to requite users a little more choice in how they use the phone. Information technology has ever been jarring to employ a Samsung phone after carrying nigh any other device because of the reversed nav buttons. Having the buttons rendered by the OS lets everyone become what they desire. Well, mostly.

Simply having on-screen navigation buttons will require an adjustment for long-time Samsung users. You lot've always been able to wake up Samsung phones with the home push button. Now you'll either need to apply the power push button on the side or tap the fingerprint sensor on the back, where information technology has been relocated. The use of on-screen buttons means some screen real estate will exist lost, but both the Milky way S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus are expected to be larger than past phones with very slim bezels. The GS8 will have a 5.vii-inch brandish and the GS8 Plus volition be 6.ii-inches.