Your Galaxy Phone

The Samsung Galaxy S7 was almost everything we hoped for, with improvements throughout leading it to be one of the most powerful, stylish and all round accomplished smartphones on the market.

But there's still room for improvement and it's low on innovation, so we have a wish list for what we want to see from the Samsung Galaxy S8. We'd also love to hear what you think, so let us know in the comments below and we'll pass on the best ones to Samsung!

The phone won't be launching for a long time yet, but that just means Samsung should have time to implement some of our suggestions. Here's hoping it listens.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? Samsung's next flagship smartphone
• When is it out? Early 2017
• What will it cost? It's going to be expensive

Samsung Galaxy S8 release date

It's too early to get too specific about release dates, but the Samsung Galaxy S8 is bound to launch in early 2017, since the beginning of the year is typically when Samsung rolls out its new flagships.

We can hazard a guess that it will arrive at or around MWC 2017, which is taking place from February 27 to March 2.

What we want to see

1. More built in storage

Samsung pleased many with the reintroduction of a microSD card slot in the Galaxy S7, but with just 32GB of built in storage, a substantial chunk of which was used by the OS, it was much needed.

Hopefully the Samsung Galaxy S8 will keep the card slot but add more built in storage. If Apple offers phones with 128GB built in Samsung can too. That way buyers will have more storage to play with, without having to fall back on the usually slower speeds of microSD cards.

2. Fewer fingerprints

The Samsung Galaxy S7 is a triumph of design and looks absolutely stunning, or at least it does until you start using it, at which point it very quickly starts picking up fingerprints.

So we really hope the Samsung Galaxy S8 avoids that. The design doesn't need to radically change, but some sort of fingerprint-repellent coating would do wonders.

3. Longer battery life

The Galaxy S7's battery life was a significant improvement on the S6's, but it's still a phone that you'll typically be charging nightly.

That's one of the few areas where it's no better than much cheaper handsets and ideally we want a phone that can comfortably last at least two days. Hopefully the Samsung Galaxy S8 will be that phone.

4. A lower price

As a premium handset the Samsung Galaxy S7 goes a long way to justifying its premium price. But when you consider that many high-end Chinese phones and even fairly big name handsets like the OnePlus 2 launched for far cheaper, it's hard not to wish it was a little more affordable.

It's unlikely that the Samsung Galaxy S8 will have a bargain price tag, but even knocking the price down to around £500 (US$600, AU$1000) would be a big help.

5. Dual front-facing speakers

The Samsung Galaxy S7 can pump out a reasonable amount of sound, but it's just got one speaker and its position on the bottom edge both means the audio isn't directed towards you when holding the phone and that the speaker can easily be covered by stray fingers.

It would be great if the Samsung Galaxy S8 took a leaf from HTC's book and had dual front-facing speakers, as that would fix all those problems, while adding meatier sound into the mix.

6. A better front-facing camera

The 12MP rear snapper on the Samsung Galaxy S7 is seriously high quality, but the front-facing camera feels a bit neglected.

It's just 5MP and there's no flash for it, leaving it lagging behind rivals. Hopefully then the Samsung Galaxy S8 will have a higher megapixel count on its selfie snapper, along with a flash and maybe even optical image stabilisation.

7. A sharper screen

QHD is plenty sharp enough we hear you saying, but hear us out. Yes, the QHD screen on the Samsung Galaxy S7 is impeccably sharp for general use. But Samsung has jumped on the VR bandwagon with the Gear VR and for that some extra pixels could be beneficial.

The Gear VR is one of the cheapest ways to get a semi-decent VR experience, but it could go from semi-decent to very good indeed if the Samsung Galaxy S8 packed a 4K display.

8. Toned-down TouchWiz

TouchWiz isn't as bad as it once was, but it's still present and still includes an annoying amount of bloat. We doubt we'll ever see stock Android on a Samsung flagship, but the closer the company gets the better.

So we'd love to see the S8 have a further toned-down version of TouchWiz, with more of a Material Design look and fewer pre-installed apps.

9. USB Type-C

Slightly surprisingly the Samsung Galaxy S7 doesn't use USB Type-C. It's not a huge loss, as the phone still supports fast charging, but it does mean you can only plug the cable in one way round.

That's a minor annoyance, but it's one that some phones have done away with and we hope the Samsung Galaxy S8 follows suit.

10. Something new

The Samsung Galaxy S7 is a fantastic handset, but it mostly improves on the Samsung Galaxy S6 while bringing back features from the Samsung Galaxy S5, like the waterproof body and microSD card slot. There's not much that's genuinely new here and certainly no massive new features.

Samsung's polished the Galaxy S7 to within an inch of its life, so for the Galaxy S8 to stand out it needs a feature to shout about. Perhaps an iris scanner, or a projector, or maybe something so new it's not even been thought up yet.

• We're looking ahead to the iPhone 7 too