The upcoming new Galaxy S10 isn’t just Samsung’s most exciting new smartphone in years, it’s also the company’s most important new smartphone in years. 2018 has been something of a gap year for Samsung as far as its mobile business is concerned. After a string of impressive releases at the high end of its smartphone business, this year’s Galaxy S and Galaxy Note updates have been big disappointments. In both cases, Samsung chose to release minor, iterative updates with designs that are nearly identical to their predecessors. The Galaxy Note 9 is slightly less disappointing than the Galaxy S9 and S9+ since it does feature a new S Pen and significantly better battery life, but suffice it to say that no one was blown away by any of Samsung’s new flagships in 2018. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are on pace to be Samsung’s worst-selling Galaxy S phones since 2012, and the Note 9 was released just two weeks ago and yet it’s already been all but forgotten by the tech media.
Next year’s Galaxy S10 is expected to put an end to Samsung’s cold streak. The phone has been rumored to be a ground-up redesign that includes a wide range of exciting new features packed into a phone that takes Samsung’s Infinity screen design to the next level. Samsung fans have been giddy with anticipation for months. Heck, even we’re excited for the Galaxy S10’s debut. But a new note from a top Samsung insider has put a serious damper on our expectations for Samsung’s upcoming new Galaxy S10 series phones.
The Galaxy S10 won’t be the next big flagship Samsung unveils. Instead, the company confirmed that it intends to give the world a preview its first foldable Galaxy phone later this year. There’s still no word on when the phone will actually be released, but it doesn’t really matter. As we explained just yesterday, you definitely shouldn’t be excited about Samsung’s first foldable Galaxy smartphone for several important reasons.
Instead, it’s the Galaxy S10 that warrants excitement, or so we thought. The phone is expected to be a huge update for the Galaxy S line, featuring a number of important firsts. It’ll be the first Samsung flagship to be powered by next-generation 7nm processors like the iPhone Xs Apple is set to debut next week, and it’ll also be the first flagship from Samsung to sport an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader. The phone will include as many as five different cameras — the Galaxy S10+ will have a triple-lens camera on the back and a dual-lens selfie cam — and it’ll have several other exciting new features.
As it turns out, however, all that exciting new tech might be packed into a phone that looks just like Samsung’s last two Galaxy S models.
Industry insider Ice Universe has a very solid track record when it comes to leaking information about unreleased Samsung phones. In fact, some of what we know about the upcoming Galaxy S10 was reported by Ice Universe before being confirmed elsewhere. He always seems to have the inside track on Samsung’s upcoming new products, and now a string of posts on Twitter suggests that he’s been hearing bad things about the Galaxy S10’s design. Here’s his latest tweet from Thursday morning, which mirrors a sentiment he has shared a few times in the past:
If the Galaxy S10 still does not adopt a major change in design, Samsung will be completely defeated by Huawei and damage the Samsung brand.
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) September 6, 2018
It’s apparent that Ice Universe hasn’t yet confirmed what the new Galaxy S10 will look like. But it’s also apparent from his tweets over the past few weeks that he has heard on multiple occasions that Samsung’s Galaxy S10 design is going to disappoint. Earlier rumors suggested Samsung’s Galaxy S10 would finally do away with the huge bezels above and below the screen in order to adopt a more modern “all-screen” design. According to what Ice Universe has heard over the past month or so, however, that might not be the case.
Samsung’s Galaxy S10 series phones will undoubtedly be better received than the S9 duo thanks to all of the exciting new features and the big performance improvements we’re expecting. But if all of that new tech is stuffed into a phone with a design that is reused for the third consecutive year when every other smartphone maker out there has shifted to an all-screen design, it would be a big disappointment.
