There are two mythical gadgets that we’ve long heard about but have never actually seen: An Apple iTV and an all-metal Samsung flagship phone. Although some rumors had raised our hopes that Samsung would be releasing a premium all-metal version of its Galaxy S5 this year, the company dashed our hopes by announcing a Galaxy S5 that only came in water-resistant plastic that makes it look like a Band-Aid. SamMobile, however, makes the case that Samsung could still benefit from releasing a premium Galaxy S5 this year even as it plans to push the plastic model as its top device.
SamMobile starts out by stating the obvious: Samsung loves to make plastic smartphones because they’re easy to mass produce. And Samsung these days is all about volume, volume, volume: It has tremendous supply chain capabilities and it wants to pump out as many Galaxy devices as it can so that they’re ready to ship on launch day. This has served Samsung incredibly well and the company has no reason to change now, especially when there’s growing evidence that there’s little growth to be found in the high-end smartphone market.
That said, SamMobile also thinks it would do Samsung some good to make a premium model in very limited qualities to appeal to the gadget geeks out there who would happily pay top dollar for the most cutting-edge tech. SamMobile would like to see such a device feature “the 64-bit Exynos processor, iris scanner, AMOLED display with 2K (2560 x 1440) resolution, and a metallic construction,” among other things.
What’s particularly ironic, of course, is that Samsung has no shame when it comes to spamming out different models of its flagship phone as the Galaxy S4 mini, the Galaxy S4 Active, the Galaxy S4 Black Edition, the Galaxy S4 mini La Fleur Edition and countless, countless others show. If Samsung wanted to produce a limited-edition version of the Galaxy S5 targeted toward Android power users, we can’t see the potential downside.
