In the shadow of the iPhone X, Samsung’s 2018 flagship has much to prove.
Samsung may be feeling antsy.
Since the iPhone X debuted in September, Apple has monopolized most of the smartphone attention. The notch. Face ID. Animoji.
Will Samsung unveil a dramatic redesign or toe the line with the Galaxy S9?
But Samsung, which sells more phones globally than Apple or any other vendor, is rumored to have no shortage of new, cool features on deck for its next flagship — which we’ll call the Galaxy S9 for now — due sometime around… well, that’s actually up for debate.
The rumors about the phone’s features range from bleeding-edge (i.e. it will be foldable) to vintage (such as, it will have a headphone jack). Everything we recently learned about Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon 845 processor, which is likely to power the Galaxy S9, points to significant advancements in camera and security technology.
With an announcement likely to come sometime in the next few months, more details are sure to leak. What follows is a collection of what we know for sure and what we’re hearing in the wind about the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S9.
Apple has made „X“ and „10“ its own.
We know that the next flagship will run Samsung’s own Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor, at least in Asia. We think that the US version will run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, which is expected to enable a whole bunch of new features plus better battery life. So far, however, only Xiaomi’s forthcoming Mi 7 is confirmed to use the Snapdragon 845.
Apple raised the bar with Face ID.
That noted, Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 845 processor, rumored to power the Galaxy S9, supports the type of 3D face mapping that’s used in Apple’s Face ID technology. And while Apple’s Face ID technology uses 30,000 dots of infrared light to map your face, Qualcomm’s capacity is 50,000 dots, theoretically giving it an accuracy edge.
The Galaxy S8 and its loathsome fingerprint scanner.
Last year, Samsung filed a patent for a foldable phone, and this summer Bloomberg reported that the company was considering releasing two models with bendable screens. Since then, the president of the company’s mobile business told the Associated Press that Samsung would launch such a phone once it resolved „some problems.“
In some ways, the design resembles the Nintendo 3DS or the ZTE Axon M, a two-screen device that can be viewed four ways and opens to make one big 6.75-inch screen. But it incorporates Samsung’s curved edge-to-edge displays, which may aid in the illusion that you are looking at one big screen when the phone is opened up. In November, the company’s Korean website listed a phone with the model number SM-G888NO, which is rumored to be the bendable model. Despite the circumstantial evidence, however, we’ll file this one under improbable.
The Snapdragon 845 would give the Galaxy S9 a big advantage, at least on paper, over other phones with killer cameras. In addition to securing bragging rights as the first to record 4K Ultra HD video, Qualcomm says the chip will produce brighter photography and video, reduce noise, and make it possible to embed tiny videos within still portraits.
Explosion issues aside, the Galaxy line is known for long battery life. The S8 and S8 Plus both lasted about 16 hours in our tests, and the Note 8 about an hour longer. One other benefit of stepping up to the Snapdragon 845 is better power efficiency — 30 percent better, according to Qualcomm. If true, this could push the Galaxy S9 beyond the vaunted 20-hour threshold.
The Galaxy line has long allowed for expandable storage via SD card.
Samsung may dramatically raise the stakes when it comes to internal storage. It’s announced the beginning of mass production of a 512GB chip that would give the Galaxy S9 eight times the integrated capacity of the 64GB Galaxy S8. A 512GB Galaxy S9 would totally dwarf the competition: the highest-end, late model iPhones top out at 256GB of storage and the Google Pixel 2 XL comes in 64GB or 128GB versions. It’s worth noting that Samsung chips often find their way into non-Samsung phones, including the iPhone.
There are a lot of factors that contribute to price. Apple’s $999 base model iPhone X has cleared the way for more four-figure phones in the future. And if Samsung delivers on all of the rumored camera upgrades, that would almost certainly push the price up.
We’ll continue to keep an eye on news and rumors in the run-up to the Galaxy S9’s official debut in early 2018.
