“Although the Galaxy S9 may not have the innovative features expected by the market, we are focusing on enhancing the completeness of the Galaxy S8 hardware and an innovative user experience (UX),” a Samsung said all the way back in mid-November. More and more Galaxy S9 reports were painting a similar picture at the time. The Galaxy S9 would not bring over a brand new design. Instead, Samsung would repackage the Galaxy S8 with new hardware and software tricks this year.
Fast-forward to today, and you’ll see a rumor that says Samsung invented new UX features for the phone never-before-seen on previous Galaxy S models.
Ice Universe, a leaker from China who keeps posting details about unreleased devices on Weibo, said in a rather cryptic message that the Galaxy S9’s user interface will be unlike anything Samsung made so far. “The Samsung UX division has designed several unique new interfaces to the Galaxy S9 that are not visible in any previous version,” a rough Google translation of the post reads.
The UX was developed exclusively for the phone, though we have no idea what that really means. After all, Samsung did develop UX features for every phone it released since it first started copying the iPhone.
As always, the user interface Samsung concocts every year still sits on top of Android. Thankfully, Samsung improved its UX design skills in recent years and removed unnecessary gimmicks and some of the bloatware that comes with each new Galaxy phone release.
Galaxy AI UX，2018.2，Galaxy S9 UX？ pic.twitter.com/QZKHfexhfJ
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 21, 2017
What we do know, from a different rumor from the same source, one that actually has images from a Samsung presentation, is that Samsung has been working on a Galaxy AI UX for some time now. Given that the new Samsung processors that will power the Galaxy S9 come with a neural engine ready to support more AI and machine learning features, it’s likely the Galaxy S9 will be the first Samsung phone to offer us a taste of this Galaxy AI UX.
Strangely enough, Samsung’s Galaxy AI UX has not leaked. The Galaxy S9 will debut at MWC 2018 in about a month from now, which gives us plenty of time to go through a myriad of rumors. So we expect the phone’s software secrets to be spilled as we get closer to Samsung’s event.
