Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Samsung’s hottest new smartphone is rumored to launch well ahead of its due date. We’re now talking about the Galaxy Note 9, which could launch as early as July. Samsung is apparently looking to beat Apple’s new iPhones to market, but also to make up for Galaxy S9 sales that have apparently fallen well short of expectations.
Early Galaxy S9 rumors also claimed that Samsung was eying a January 2018 launch to counter the then-popular iPhone X. As we approached January, those rumors died down, and Samsung stuck to its regular MWC announcement schedule for the Galaxy S series. To be fair, though, an early Note 9 launch is certainly possible. Samsung has in the recent past released flagship products ahead of schedule. The Galaxy Note 7 is one such example, but we all know how that turned out.
The new report comes out of Korea, where The Investor has learned that Samsung is said to already be mass-producing its OLED displays for the Galaxy Note 9. It’s not unusual for Samsung to start preparations for the mass-production of a new device well in advance of its actual launch. It’s how smartphone manufacturing works. But the report says Samsung Display will kick off production in April, which would be about two months earlier than the usual June kickoff for Note series phones.
Samsung is supposedly reacting to the “less than stellar” sales performance of the Galaxy S9, but also to the fact that Apple’s best 2018 iPhones are supposed to arrive on time this year. Last fall, the “boring” iPhone 8 series launched in September, just as expected, while the iPhone X didn’t hit stores until early November. Reports have claimed that Apple is already taking several steps to ensure there won’t be any delays this year caused by bottlenecks in the production of the Face ID camera system.
The Galaxy Note 8 was unveiled on August 23rd, hitting stores on September 15th. The Note 7, meanwhile, was released almost a month earlier in the summer of 2016, on August 16th, two weeks after its August 2nd unveiling.
The Investor also provides an interesting detail about the Galaxy Note 9’s screen. Apparently, the display won’t feature a built-in fingerprint sensor, which is the potential feature that has everyone buzzing. A few weeks ago, a report said Samsung ditched such plans, while a different rumor claimed that Samsung was still planning to include the feature.
Considering what Samsung did with the Galaxy S9 this year, we expect the Galaxy Note 9 to be very similar to its predecessor. The Investor only mentions the screen size of the handset, which measures 6.38 inches, or 0.06 inches bigger than the Note 8’s screen.
