The next iteration of Samsung’s trend-setting Galaxy smartphone is expected to debut early next year
The company announced the S8 in March, which caught some off-guard as it traditionally reveals its new phones at the Mobile World Congress tech conference in February.
Providing this year was a one-off, we could be seeing the Samsung Galaxy S9 in as little as three months time.
There’s been no official word from Samsung, but plenty of rumours are already circulating around the internet. Alongside the Google Pixel, the Samsung Galaxy S8 has emerged as a bona fide alternative to Apple’s iPhone 8 and iPhone X phones.
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Samsung was the first company to experiment with an edge-to-edge display as well as face-scanning unlock features. Other aspects of its phones, like the Bixby personal assistant, have failed to take off.
But it’s highly likely that the new Galaxy S9 will pack in plenty of interesting features – but it won’t be cheap.
Here’s everything we know about it so far.
Latest news
The Samsung Galaxy S9 (and S9+) appear to have been leaked in a couple of tweets that show off advanced renders of the upcoming handsets.
Posted online by serial leaker @OnLeaks, they show a sleek pair of smartphones that build on the S8’s fantastic design.
Credit for the renders goes to tech website 91mobiles, which has posted several snaps of the upcoming flagships.
Sooo… You’ve been eagerly waiting for him, there you finally have it! #Samsung #GalaxyS9 360° video render + dimensions, on behalf of @91mobiles…
https://hub.91mobiles.com/samsung-galaxy-s9-exclusive-renders-360-
As mentioned, we expect the Samsung Galaxy S9 to be revealed sometime around February or March of next year. It’s almost certainly going to be shown off at a glitzy Samsung “Unpacked” event.
Whether that’s going to be at Mobile World Congress or a dedicated Samsung event remains to be seen.
Even after the phone’s been announced, it usually takes a few weeks before it actually lands in the shops. To be conservative, we’d estimate the Samsung Galaxy S9 appearing around the end of March or the beginning of April next year.
One intriguing rumour is that the phone could launch in January – due to the fact that Samsung’s engineers started work earlier than usual on the phone’s OLED display. We’re treating this with a huge pinch of salt as it’s unlikely that many customers will rush to buy a brand new phone in January.
Price
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Don’t expect the Samsung Galaxy S9 to be a cheap gadget. The current lowest-price S8 will still set you back £689 .
It’s highly unlikely that Samsung will drop the price for its newer phone so you can expect it to cost at least that. What remains to be seen is whether the company will match Apple with a phone costing over £1,000 once you get into the higher specs.
Design
Samsung’s all-screen Galaxy S8 won plenty of praise when it was released so it’s highly unlikely to change the design in any kind of meaningful way.
However, early renders (above) appear to show the company has changed the biggest annoyance with the S8 by moving the fingerprint scanner further down the body of the phone within easier reach of your fingertip.
What’s more, the image shows a dual-lens camera. Samsung introduced this feature with the recent Galaxy Note 8 so it’s not surprising to see it carried over to the Samsung Galaxy S9.
As has become customary, we can probably expect two different versions of the S9; a regular model and a larger “S9 Plus” model.
Specs
If the outward design remains unchanged, the story won’t be the same on the inside of the phone. Samsung will no doubt up the processor and, possibly, the RAM and storage space to try and make the new model more attractive.
However, according to a post on BGR , leaked specs from the new phone show that it fails to stack up against the iPhone X.
The post suggests it will boast a new octa-core Exynos chip with 4GB of RAM and the latest version of Android. But supposed benchmarks of the new phone didn’t match what the iPhone X can achieve.Samsung may of course tweak this before the launch and still has months left to fine-tune, so it’s unlikely that this won’t be one of the most powerful phones on the market when it finally appears.
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