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What to expect during Samsung’s 2017 Galaxy Unpacked and how to watch it

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Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 could be the company’s best smartphone yet and might need to be after the Galaxy Note 7 disaster.

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Wednesday is the big day for Samsung. The electronics giant will take the wraps off the Galaxy S8, its next major flagship smartphone, and it is holding flashy press conferences in New York and London to kick things off. A livestream of Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked 2017 will begin on the company’s website at 11 a.m. ET, and we will be covering the event live as it unfolds.

Thanks to a deluge of leaks, we know more or less what to expect. The Galaxy S8 is expected to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor, the newest and most powerful in the chip maker’s lineup. The phone’s rumored to ditch a physical home button in favor of a 5.8-inch curved edge-to-edge screen with a WQHD+ (2,960 x 2,400 pixels). It is said to pack an iris scanner that unlocks the phone in the blink of an eye — literally.

More: Samsung Galaxy S8 rumors and news leaks

That is not all we might see during the big reveal. Samsung announced that its upcoming smartphone will feature Bixby, an artificial assistant that can be activated with a physical button. It’s capable of analyzing images, identifying objects and text, and tapping into the Samsung Galaxy S8’s native apps.

The Galaxy S8 might ship with a novel accessory, too: A dock that, according to the latest leaks, connects the Galaxy S8 to a computer monitor for a “full desktop experience” replete with mouse and keyboard support. It’s said to be akin to Microsoft’s Continuum feature for Windows.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The company’s embarking on a long, slow road to recovery from the exploding Galaxy Note 7 debacle, which was the largest smartphone recall in history and a 96 percent plummet in the company’s mobile earnings. To win back consumer trust, it will have to convince them that the Galaxy S8 isn’t going to suffer the same fate.

More: Everything we know about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 recall

To that end, Samsung’s conducted a thorough review into the Note 7’s explosive tendencies, the results of which it detailed at a January press event in South Korea. It has instituted a new eight-point device inspection process, added staff to oversee testing, and made its intellectual property around battery safety and standards freely available.

We’re expecting to hear more about the company’s new preventative measures during Wednesday’s Unpacked event. Follow us on Twitter @DigitalTrends for up-to-the-minute updates.

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