Samsung will only begin its global rollout of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus on April 21 but new reports indicate the company is already busy on the Galaxy Note 8 and on its 2018 flagship - the Galaxy S9. Work on the latter has already commenced but release date will not necessarily happen ahead of schedule.

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In a new report, Korean news site The Investor said Samsung has green lighted the GS9 project and development of certain components of the device is now underway. Pointing to unnamed sources, the publication claimed display screens for the next-generation Galaxy flagship is now being developed, the start of which is six months in advance.

The early GS9 development start is supposedly to ensure that the handset will be completed in accordance "to the strengthened quality control process," that Samsung has put in place following the recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in late 2016. It appears obvious that the South Korean tech giant is working doubly hard to prevent a repeat of the Note 7 debacle.

Samsung was forced to halt production of its 2016 phablet flagship following series of battery explosions blamed on faulty design of the device. As a result, the company ordered a total recall of the handset.

But despite the embarrassment, Samsung refused to kill the phablet brand it invented and even confirmed that a follow up to the device will be issued in the second half of 2017.

While solid details on the rumored Galaxy Note 8 are yet to be provided, rumors are aplenty on the specs upgrade to expect. As in the previous years, the Note 8 when realized will represent of the refinements or the things that Samsung might have missed with the Galaxy S8.

One notable step up for the Note 8, according to WCCFTech, is the possible inclusion of virtual fingerprint reader or the security feature embedded on the display screen. The report said the same feature was originally planned for the GS8 but time ran out on Samsung so would-be Note 8 buyers will instead get a first taste of the technology.

As for the other Galaxy Note 8 feature upgrades on release date, which likely will happen as early as September 2017, the same report pointed to the clip below for an overview of the new things to come for Sammy phablet lovers: