Mobile World Congress is fast approaching, and that means a whole new round of flagship devices from manufacturers are coming too.
As you read this, Samsung is likely readying the Galaxy S6 and the speculation is mounting about what it may or may not feature. Will it have a 5.2-inch, flexible display with 4K resolution? Or maybe even an all-metal frame?
Keep reading to catch up on all the latest rumours and what we would love to see arrive with it.
Samsung Galaxy S6 release date
Samsung hasn't officially announced a launch date for the Galaxy S6, but an invitation to the first Unpacked event of the year marks out 1 March, which is the day before MWC begins and the date the new handset is now expected to be unveiled. There has been no word on when it could be released, but an educated guess would suggest around April as this would follow the previous patterns of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5.
In terms of price, again there have been no official statements on how much the Galaxy S6 will cost you, but it is likely it will be priced similarly to the Galaxy S5, which had a price tag of £579 without a SIM.
If the phone happens to blow our minds and be more premium, expect a price tag north of £600. A recent leak suggested a €749 starting price for a 32GB model of the SGS6.Â
Samsung Galaxy S6 display
Some chatter indicated the Galaxy S6 could feature a flexible display, but that seems unlikely and is rarely backed up by recent rumours. What is more likely is that the display will have the same Quad HD resolution as the recently launched Note 4 and LG's G3 with 2560 x 1440 pixels across it, offering a big improvement on the 1920 x 1080 display of the Galaxy S5.It won't be the first smartphone in Samsung's line up to offer the higher resolution display and it will arrive sometime after the higher than Full HD resolution displays arrived on the smartphone market, but it would be an improvement nonetheless. Samsung previously said it will have 4K 3840 x 2160 displays on the market by 2015 so it is therefore possible that the Galaxy S6 will bypass 2K and feature a 4K screen. But again, recent rumours have been more about a flat Quad HD display of around 5.1 to 5.2-inches.Â
At a recent event for Samsung investors, Lee-Chang Hoon, vice president of Samsung Display's business, said: "We plan to provide consumers with a product that has a flexible display by the end of the year." That is probably going to be an all new phone however, with a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge variant, going by the name of the Galaxy S Edge, touted too.
According to sources of SamMobile there will be two variants of the Galaxy S6, one with a normal flat display and the Galaxy S Edge with a slightly wrapped flexible screen. This should feature the same wrap-around display that offers a second side-screen as the Galaxy Note Edge features.Â
When it comes to display size of the Galaxy S6, as previously suggested, current rumours put it at 5.1-inches, although that could stretch to 5.2 or even 5.3-inches. Keep in mind that the company won't go too big with the screen as then it would see the Galaxy S6 enter Galaxy Note territory, and chances are Samsung wants to continue the differentiation between these two ranges. The S6's screen has purportedly leaked on an AnTuTu benchmark test with a 5.5-inch QHD display, but that size seems unlikely.
Samsung Galaxy S6 design
Rumours previously suggested the Galaxy S6 would feature a plastic OLED that would allow the device to fold and bend, though it was also widely believed, especially since the all-metal Galaxy Alpha debuted, that the Galaxy S6 will feature a metal frame.Recent image leaks from French website Nowhereelse suggest the metal frame could very well be the case with. The site published three aluminium case images that it claims make up the Galaxy S6 and while there is no other evidence to support the claim, they do look similar to the Galaxy line.
If the images are legitimate, it would suggest the rumours of an aluminium back and curved display aren't too far off the mark and Bloomberg has also laid claim to an all-metal body. It has also been suggested Samsung may use the material graphene in parts of the S6's design, while BGR has claimed that the phone will have Gorilla Glass 4 over the display and other glass elements in the design.
While it's not yet confirmed if the Galaxy S6 will feature any of these changes, keep in mind Samsung might have something radical up its sleeve. That's right. At long last it looks like a smartphone revolution could be on its way in Samsung's Project Zero.
Ivo Maric and Jermaine Smitare designers that have teamed to produce a video featuring both prospective phones, with some amazing real-world/hands-on renders towards the end.
Project Zero
Project Zero is Samsung's next major project. More specifically, it's a codename project for the the Galaxy S6, according to sources of SamMobile. Previous phones from Samsung have also sported Project monikers, including Project K for the S5 and Project T for the Note 4.
It's thought that by changing the letters to numbers and by starting at zero, Samsung has a significant shift in the works. Perhaps, finally, Samsung is going back to the drawing board to create a handset that reflects the wealth of the company.
Due to critics and consumers alike voicing criticism about the design choices made in its latest flagship smartphone - coupled with less-than-expected Galaxy S5 sales - Samsung recently replaced its mobile design leader Chang Dong-hoon with deputy Lee Min-hyouk.
It's therefore safe to assume the Galaxy S6 will feature a dramatically different design than past flagship devices, though whether the new design might include a flexible display and/or metal frame has yet to be confirmed by the company.
Samsung Galaxy S6 features
Samsung of course has its own Tizen operating system, but the Galaxy S6 will probably stick to Android. More specifically, the Galaxy S6 will probably have Android Lollipop since the OS will have been around for months by the time it releases.
The AnTuTu leak showed the S6 running Android 5.0 Lollipop and it is also very likely to run Samsung's TouchWiz UI as an overlay rather than pure Android like you would find on the Nexus devices.
That said, a strong rumour coming out of Korea suggests that while TouchWiz UI will be featured, it will be a dramatically cut back version than on previous devices. In order to simplify the experience and cut down on the amount of storage space the system steals from the user, it is alleged that Samsung is looking for a more vanilla style Lollipop experience, a bit like the Nexus 6. "We are aiming to get rid of unnecessary functions and simplify our UI at the level of Google's Nexus 6," an industry source told Business Korea.
According to sources of SamMobile, the Galaxy S6 should offer themes that allow users to customise their software. These themes can be applied for certain events too, say with green and red for Christmas.
The above image is the logo for the Theme Store which should allow all sorts of customisation options including system fonts, sounds colours and more. Presumably Samsung will open this store up to third-parties, as it has done with its other stores, to allow for the maximum number of offerings.
There's also been rumours that the Galaxy S6 will come pre-loaded with Microsoft apps.
Samsung Galaxy S6 hardware
A recent specifications dump by BGR claims that the battery will actually be quite light, at just 2550mAh, but significant power saving features will aid with lifetime. It will also come with wireless charging built-in and is said to be able to gain four hours worth of use out of just a 10 minute charge.
The phone is also said to come with NFC (obviously) but also a new Samsung tech, called Samsung Pay. Like Apple Pay, this feature will enable users to store their cards in a specific Samsung digital wallet and pay on contactless terminals. It is also claimed that it will work with 90 per cent of magnetic strip terminals too, although we're not entirely sure how.
In terms of processor, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 808 and Snapdragon 810 CPUs in April, and they're expected to appear in handsets sometime in early 2015. That's the same time we expect the Galaxy S6 to release so chances are we could see a very powerful handset. Although rumours have suggested the Snapdragon 810 is suffering overheating that may see Samsung use its own Exynos chips at launch, adding 810s later when the problem is fixed.
A report from Bloomberg, which cites "people with direct knowledge", seems to substantiate that opinion. However, it goes one step further, claiming the company will stick with its own processor for the entire release line-up - in the US and Europe too.
The Galaxy S5 features a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset, and the Galaxy S4 featured a Snapdragon 600 chipset, so it would make sense that Samsung would put either the 808 or 810 units in the Galaxy S6 if the rumours against such a move are false. We'd prefer the 64-bit, six-core Snapdragon 808 processor, in that case.The 808 can support display resolutions up to 2560 x 1600 pixels, and it's supposed to come with LPDDR3 memory, battery management improvements, and Adreno 418 GPU for impressive graphics performances. That said, the AnTuTu leak shows the S6 with a 64-bit octa-core Exynos 7420 processor and ARM Mali T-760 GPU backed by 3GB of RAM. This is a bit suspect as Samsung has been raving about 4GB RAM developments so we'd expect them to appear in the S6. It also was shown with 32GB storage.
The BGR specifications leak seems to confirm much of that, claiming that the processor is indeed 64-bit and octa-core.
According to the Korean media, the new Exynos chip from Samsung will be able to support Cat 10 LTE 4G meaning speeds of up to 450Mbps. While this won't be available in the real world in the UK, as 300Mbps networks aren't even fully available yet, it would certainly future-proof the Galaxy S6, although other specifications leaks suggest it's more likely to be limited to Cat 6 LTE compatibility.
The Exynos 7420 has appeared on a Geekbench 3.0 test showing off a 5478 multi-core score which beats the HTC One M9, which also leaked showing a 3587 score.
Camera
The most recent reports have all pined for the Galaxy S6 to include a 20-megapixel camera. The AnTuTu benchmark leak showed a 20-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel selfie snapper, while the specifications leak posted by BGR also hints at a 20-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel camera on the front.Additionally, an official statement in a Samsung camera article talked about the 2015 flagship phone camera, which we presume is the Galaxy S6. It said: "It will be intelligent and do all the thinking for users, allowing them to take amazing pictures under any conditions, without having to worry about anything more than just pressing the shutter button." Here's hoping for a super smart camera that does everything for us so we get the perfect photo with ease, and quickly.
Samsung has also released a teaser video for the SGS6 and we can't help feeling that it's showing off the camera outline here too.
Wishful thinking
The Galaxy S6 will likely include Samsung's fingerprint scanner, as well as the heart rate monitor and microSD card slot from the Galaxy S5, plus water and dust resistancy etc. All that aside, there are some new things we're really hoping to see (apart from the stuff mentioned above).Examples include a big battery, faster wireless charging, stock Android, more than one speaker, and Moto X-style always listening functionality, among other things. Let us know in the comments if you can think of anything else you'd like to see included in the Galaxy S6.
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