Since Samsung has done away with the home button on the Galaxy S8, it has used the power button on the device to offer the shortcut to quickly launch the camera app. This shortcut is also found on other Android devices so Samsung’s decision is in line with other companies.

However, as many early Indian Galaxy S8 owners have discovered, the shortcut is not working on their devices and the option to enable it is also missing. It was believed that Samsung will roll out a software update for the handset to add the feature before its official release on May 5th. Sadly, Samsung India has now issued an official statement confirming that Indian Galaxy S8 units will not come with the option to launch the camera app by double-pressing the power button. The company says that it has disabled this feature because it can accidentally interfere with the Indian government’s regulation to trigger an SOS call when the power button is pressed 3 times.

For all India region devices, it is a legal regulation to launch “emergency /SOS mode” when clicking power button three times. This overlaps the use case of Galaxy S8′s global feature, camera quick launch when double clicking the power button. Since consumers may click power button for three times instead of twice, by any mistake, so we did not include quick launch feature within India regional device.

Hope this gives you further background.

Thank you.

This is surely going to be a bummer for many especially users who plan on frequently using the camera on their Galaxy S8 to take photos. In India specifically, Samsung could have allowed users to remap the dedicated Bixby button to open the camera app. But knowing the Korean company, it is unlikely to offer its consumers any such option through a future software update.