What to expect from Samsung in 2019

What’s Samsung’s mobile division up to in 2019? Click here to see our best guesses, including the firm’s first foldable and 5G models.

The foldable Galaxy F (aka Galaxy Fold / Galaxy Flex)

Samsung first showed off their foldable smartphone earlier this year, after years of rumours that they had been working on such a device. While the device was shrouded to protect the specifics, it looked to have a 7.3-inch ‘Infinity Flex’ display that could be folded up to use as a regular-size smartphone with two 3- to 4-inch screens. This new functionality could also protect the display from damage, flexing rather than breaking. The foldable smartphone is expected to be pricey though, at up to £2000 - between twice and three times as much as the standard S10.

The 5G Galaxy S10 (aka Galaxy X / Galaxy SX)

Samsung is reportedly preparing its first 5G mobile phones to go on sale in the first half of next year, some time ahead of Apple’s first 5G iPhone which is rumoured to debut in 2020. The 5G phone may well be Samsung’s flagship, the Galaxy S10, although the company does have a history of releasing feature-specific smartphones - so perhaps we’ll see a Galaxy S10 5G instead?

Either way, you can expect incredibly fast speeds as long as you’re in an area supported by 5G infrastructure, which will begin in the UK’s biggest cities and national capitals before rolling out to smaller cities, towns and rural areas over the next few years.

Samsung’s early 2019 flagship is expected to arrive in at least two different sizes, all with 19:9 aspect ratio screens and a resolution of 1440 x 3040. The phone’s flat bezels will be reduced still further, potentially by putting the phone’s front-facing camera(s) beneath the display itself. That’s something that Samsung hinted at during a developer conference earlier this year; if 2018 was the year of the notched display, 2019 may become the year of the hole-punch display. You’ll be able to log in with a sub-screen fingerprint reader or with your face, as Samsung continue to compete against Apple’s Face ID.

Other specs include a bleeding-edge Exynos 8150 processor or a Snapdragon 855 CPU (depending on region), potentially backed with 8GB or even 12GB of RAM. Storage could also be going up, with capacities of 128GB to 1TB mooted. Basically, this will be the best-equipped Samsung Galaxy smartphone ever made, although it’s too early to tell whether the jump will be significantly bigger than the usual inter-year cadence.

The phone is expected to be announced prior to MWC, as we’ve seen with many of Samsung’s phones in the past. That would put the event date on or near February 24th.

The Galaxy Note 10

The Galaxy Note 10 is also expected to be released in September 2018. We can expect to see the same upgraded specifications, new design and 5G capabilities as the earlier S10, plus an improved stylus and potentially a larger screen as well. This phone is still pretty far away from release and has had few leaks, so we’ll call it there before we start to speculate too much!

Wrapping up

So there we have it! I hope this answered a few questions you had and gave you a better idea of what to expect from Samsung in 2019. It’s sure to be an exciting year, so stay tuned for the latest updates, phone reviews and more as the year progresses!