The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have had four good months of market celebration, but the Galaxy Note 8 brings Samsung’s dual camera setup that may have some Galaxy S8 owners envious of their Galaxy Note-toting buddies. According to a new report, Galaxy Note 8 owners may have only four months to rock their new smartphones before the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus (Galaxy S9+) supplant it.
That’s the word out of Korea by way of The Investor, which says that Samsung’s OLED panels will start shipping in November and that the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus could be unveiled as early as January 2018. Usually, the timetable from display shipments to phone unveiling is two to three months. The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ display panels shipped this past January before their March announcement, so the idea of a January 2018 unveiling of Samsung’s next-generation devices isn’t all that far-fetched. Should the device ship according to this timetable, it’s likely the world market could see the phones released for purchase by mid-February.
There are a few things we know about the upcoming Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, among them, that the devices are codenamed “Star” and “Star 2,” and that they could sport Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 845 SoC (the Snapdragon 836 is in the works for Google’s Pixel 2 phones).
As for the display panel shipments rumor, it does make sense: after all, we’ve already discovered that Samsung isn’t pushing the display boundaries in the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, and the back-mounted fingerprint sensor location will remain the same as it is on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8. If the display sizes and fingerprint sensor will remain the same as we’ve already seen in this year’s Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, then a January 2018 unveiling is highly likely.
Samsung will bring its dual camera setup to the Galaxy S9, marking a significant first for the Galaxy S series next year, but outside of the dual rear cameras and the Snapdragon 845, much of what the Galaxy S9 will bring is iterative from the Galaxy Note 8. That’s not a bad thing, but the decision to level the spec sheet between the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series means that earlier-than-normal phone unveilings, like dual rear cameras, could be the next big trend.
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