Samsung has officially announced the date for their next Unpacked event. The event is being held on the 20th of February and it’s expected that Samsung will finally unveil their newest flagship phone, the Galaxy S10. The event will take place at 11 AM PT at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.
The Galaxy S10 has been talked about a lot for the past year, because it’s an exciting prospect. The Samsung Galaxy S8 was a terrific phone and people were excited about how Samsung would top such a phone with the S9. However, the S9 felt more like an incremental upgrade rather than a big one. The disappointing sales for the S9 also showed how Samsung had failed to meet a lot of people’s expectations.
There have been rumors going around for months now that Samsung has been focusing all their energies towards the S10, which is why the S9 played second fiddle. Whether or not that’s true is up for debate. However, it does seem like the S10 will be a huge upgrade. That’s why everyone’s so excited about it. It has been rumored for months that there will be an S10 variant that will be 5G compatible. If that’s true, then it ties in perfectly with the unusual timing of the Unpacked event.
Usually, Samsung launches its S series flagship devices at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Spain. However, this time the company could announce the S10 earlier. The 10th anniversary of Samsung Galaxy phones is approaching and the number ’10’ can be prominently seen on the photo released by Samsung for the event.
It can be argued that the number 10 could mean the 10th anniversary, but we believe that it’s definitely hinting towards the Galaxy S10. If you look at the photo closely, the photo itself is a bezel-related teaser for the upcoming device. You can look at the photo in many ways.
One way to look at it is that the lighter portion of the image shows how the screen would be like, the darker portion showing the back of the phone. Another way to look at it is that it’s hinting towards their much anticipated foldable phone, which is also possible. It’s logical to expect that Samsung will announce the S10 at Unpacked. This way, they could announce up to 3 different variants of the regular S10.
MWC is shaping up to be a conference led by 5G. Therefore, it would make the most sense for Samsung to save their 5G-compatible S10 for the conference in Barcelona and announce the other models prior. As discussed earlier, we may not get just the S10 at Unpacked either. We can also expect a fully functional foldable phone from Samsung.
Welcome to the next generation. Galaxy Unpacked on February 20, 2019. #SamsungEvent pic.twitter.com/M1Gh0F9Fs5
— Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) January 10, 2019
The foldable phone has been teased a lot and prototypes have also been shown. The fully functional version has yet to be seen and Samsung has said that we will be seeing it very soon. Moreover, if you pay close attention to the video Samsung uploaded on Twitter (above), you can see it’s hinting towards a dual/foldable screen. There’s a lot of reason to be excited about this event. We can at least expect one of the two most anticipated Samsung devices for 2019 at Unpacked.
What to expect from the Galaxy S10
A lot of rumors and leaks have surfaced for the past few months regarding the S10 and there are some things which are official too alongside some hints Samsung has been dropping. One thing that’s confirmed by Samsung itself is that the S10 will be a huge upgrade that will bring about a dramatic change to their phone design. Since it’s possible for Samsung to launch the S10 on February 20, here’s what we could expect from the S10.
The latest chipset and possibly an EXYNOS chipset
Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 7nm chip is now ready to be used by phone manufacturers. With all the leaks and rumors regarding the camera and other possibilities for the phone, it’ll likely be a powerhouse. Therefore, we can for sure expect the Snapdragon 855 chip in the S10.
It was also rumored that the S10 would have different variants, starting with an entry-level variant. The entry-level variant could have Samsung’s own Exynos chipset. This chip isn’t the best and won’t beat Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. However, it has drastically improved over the years and the best thing about the chip is that it works well for Samsung phones, since it’s made for these type of phones. Therefore, the entry-level S10 could be made cheaper this way with making a little compromise to performance. We can expect more RAM too with 8-10 GB now seeming quite possible.
Design
The design department is where there’ll be the biggest changes this year. Samsung has promised a totally revamped and innovative design. Samsung has also dropped hints here and there regarding the design for the Galaxy S10. A few months ago, Samsung showed in a presentation the different types of screens they were working on, as they supply screens to other manufacturers too.
One of the most interesting designs was the punch-hole camera design. The phone is entirely bezel-less for the most part except for a tiny hole for the camera on one of the edges. You can get an idea of what it’ll look like down below.
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/1080839947135922177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1080839947135922177&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techradar.com%2Fnews%2Fsamsung-galaxy-s10
We’ve also seen this design in the latest Samsung Galaxy A8s, a mid-range Samsung device. This type of display is known as the Infinity O display and it’s very likely that the Galaxy S10 will follow. As the race to a notch-less, bezel-less phone without any sliding or dual screens continues, this looks like Samsung’s approach at getting close to the goal.
Samsung is working on under the screen technology that would put everything under the screen but it’s still in its early stages so the infinity O display is what we get for now. Samsung has mocked Apple and others heavily for adopting the notch and even though we’ve seen the tear-drop styled notch on some of their new phones, we definitely won’t be seeing one on the S10.
Cameras
The cameras are also highly talked about for the S10. This is because of the way Samsung has released some mid-range devices in 2018. The Samsung Galaxy A7 that came out in 2018 had a triple camera setup. It was odd to see that a mid-range device would have such a camera setup given other companies have been doing it for their flagship devices.
Samsung took this a step further and then released the Galaxy A9 which had a 4 camera setup, something that hasn’t been done so far. One can argue that 4 cameras are too much but if they do make their way to the S10, it would make the phone one of the best and versatile in terms of photo quality. A lot of people believe that Samsung is experimenting on their mid-range devices in order to make their flagship product the best they possibly can.
That may or may not be true but these phones definitely give us an idea about what to expect from the S10. Since the device is said to have 3 different versions, the S10 Lite, the regular S10, and the S10 Plus, we can expect three different camera setups.
We could expect the S10 Lite to have a dual camera setup, the S10 to have a triple camera setup, and the Plus to have the quad camera setup. It may be possible for the S10 and S10 Lite to have similar camera setups too, but one thing that we can be sure about is that the quad setup is reserved for the bigger, S10 Plus. A leak suggests how the S10 Plus might look like, with dual front-facing cameras.
Other rumors and expectations
Apart from the main stuff like the camera and other hardware, there are other things what we should and shouldn’t expect from the device. Samsung is perhaps the only company now left which has still kept the headphone jack on their device. From the release of the Galaxy A8s which had the Infinity O display, fans are worried Samsung might finally get rid of the headphone jack as their latest device did not come with one.
However, we still think that Samsung won’t part ways with the jack just yet. The device is going to be big, and there should be room for the jack. There are a lot of people that buy Samsung phones just for the headphone jack so Samsung would probably lose a lot of customers by getting rid of the jack.
There’s also this image that’s been circulating the internet for a while now. There are a lot of people who believe that Samsung will achieve the truly bezel-less display on the S10 and this is what the phone will likely look like. However, given what we’ve talked about above and their Infinity O display, it’s hard to believe that Samsung will have the technology ready to go fully bezel-less.
The possibility is there, but it’s very unlikely. What we can expect is a well-rounded, close to a bezel-less device with the punch-hole cameras. We can expect the battery to increase as well since the S9 has been criticized for its poor battery performance when compared to the competition. The 5G version of the S10 is rumored to have a whopping 5000 mAh battery. We can’t be sure about it but expect to have better battery life on the S10.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy S10 is a device we should all be excited for. A lot of people have put their trust in Samsung and hopefully, they won’t disappoint. Although most of the stuff we’ve talked about is just rumors and speculation, so we can definitely be wrong on most of the stuff talked about above.
However, there are some rumors and leaks that sound sensible as well. We can definitely expect Samsung to implement the punch-hole front cameras and the triple and quad cam setups. Whatever the case is, we don’t have to wait much longer, let’s see what Samsung has in store for us on the 20th of February.