The unlocked Galaxy S8 Active and its huge 4,000mAh battery gets WiFi certified

We’ve had our eye on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active for quite sometime now. The big 4,000mAh battery, flat AMOLED display, and military grade rugged body — it’s everything we wished the regular S8 was and then some. Although the S8 Active sounds like an absolute dream, it’s always been exclusive to one carrier here in the US: AT&T, but that might soon change.

An unlocked version of the device — previously rumored — has just been granted WiFi certification and is getting closer to becoming a reality. A phone carrying nearly an identical model number to the AT&T variant (SM-G892U in stead of SM-G892A) passed through the WiFi Alliance a short time ago and could be the first Galaxy S Active to launch outside of AT&T since the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active.

The existence of an unlocked S8 Active isn’t too terribly surprising. After all, the wording in AT&T’s initial press release for the S8 Active made it sound like they only had a timed exclusivity deal with Samsung. The big question is when we can expect to see the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S8 Active launch, which from the looks of things, could be right around the corner.

WiFi Alliance (PDF) | via Twitter