With Galaxy S10, 5G and foldable devices, Samsung hopes to recover its mojo

Do you feel that your Samsung phone is a bit boring? It's about to change.

Samsung's range of phones will make a huge leap this year. Among the advances: fingerprint readers, 5G ultra-fast connectivity and even foldable phones that grow in the shelves.

We will have an overview of these new features and more on Wednesday when the company will host its Unpacked event at Bill Graham's San Francisco auditorium. Samsung will launch his speech at 11 am, Paris time / 2 pm. AND.

The South Korean telephony giant will use Unpacked to introduce its new Galaxy S10 range, which many of us will purchase over the next year. He should also show off the sartorial technologies in addition to talking about his 5G push and foldable cell phone. The event will be packed with major changes to Samsung devices over the years.

Unpacked can not come soon enough. Let's face it, phones just have not been exciting recently. It's becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers to incorporate new innovations every year into their rectangular glass plates, even though the prices continue to increase. Suffering from both phone fatigue and sticker shock, many of us hang on to our devices longer than before. Samsung, Apple and everyone else must redouble their efforts to persuade us to spend money.

Smartphone shipments fell 5% to 376 million units last year, according to Strategy Analytics. "This is the first time in its history that the global smartphone market is in decline," said Linda Sui, analyst of Strategy Analytics. "It's a landmark event."

Last month, Samsung announced a sharp drop in revenue and profits due to the sluggish smartphone market. Most of its activities, from chips to screens, have been impacted by weaker demand and stronger competition in the handset sector. Sales of smartphones have declined, memory chips for handsets have not sold as well and mobile screens have suffered.

In total, Samsung delivered 291.3 million smartphones last year, according to Strategy Analytics, down 8.3 percent from 2017.

Samsung, which declined to comment before Unpacked, hopes that changes to its lineup will be enough to allow us to open our portfolios again. At the very least, the company wants us to be sufficiently intrigued to go to its new stores and see the devices in person.

Galaxy S10 tweaks

Samsung is struggling with the same problem as all players in the mobile phone industry: make changes that are big enough to entice users to upgrade. Last year, the Galaxy S9, S9 Plus and Note 9 have not made much noticeable improvements over the Galaxy S8, S8 Plus and Note 8. 2017. Of course, the processors were faster and the components hung, but the design remained the same Do not do anything more different. This has hurt the demand for phones.

The design of the Galaxy S10 should not be a huge leap forward compared to the S9 – the rectangles do not allow you everything you can do – but it should include some adjustments that make it a better phone.

"It has been a bit difficult for them" to make huge changes beyond what they've already done, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies. "But some innovations that we expect and have been rumored to be welcome."

For starters, there should be a fingerprint reader on the screen. The Galaxy S10 is expected to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, the first chip that works with Qualcomm's 3D sonic sensor, an on-screen ultrasound fingerprint reader.

This means that Samsung's fingerprint readers could return to the front screen, reversing an unpopular move on the back of the phone that critics and users have complained about. Ultrasonic technology should be much safer than Samsung's Face Unlock technology. With the 3D sonic sensor, Samsung can still offer a screen that extends across the entire front.

Samsung is also expected to improve the camera of its devices by adding more lenses and a new mode "Brilliant Night" to take better pictures in dark environments. For the camera lenses located at the front of the phones, Samsung should continue to avoid the notch popularized by the iPhone. Instead, it could include a "puncher" design for the camera that allows the screen to take even more room on the front of the camera. He teased this design at his developer conference in November.

Foldable and high speeds

The settings of the Galaxy S10 are not all that is expected in Unpacked. Other phone ads from Samsung should be real revelers.

The biggest news is probably the unveiling of Samsung's first collapsible phone. The company has been talking about the device for years and finally introduced a prototype in November. It uses a new screen technology called Infinity Flex Display that allows you to repeatedly open and close the device without degradation of the screen.

The device will be a compact smartphone when it will be closed and a larger tablet when it will be fully open. Apps seamlessly transition between screen sizes, allowing you to choose the tablet where you left off the smartphone. When the device is unfolded, you can use three active applications.

Beyond these first details, Samsung did not say much about the foldable format, including when it could hit the market. Although it is unlikely to sell huge quantities right away, the collapsible format could indicate the future of smartphones.

And then there's 5G, another emerging technology that we'll all use afterwards.

5G technology is expected to dramatically improve the speed, coverage, and responsiveness of wireless networks. It can run between 10 and 100 times faster than the current conventional cellular connection and will be even faster than service over a physical fiber optic cable. It will also connect a device to the network faster, at speeds as fast as a millisecond, to start your download.

Overall speed gains mean that phones will be better equipped to handle complex computing tasks in a fraction of the time they currently take. This could make possible advanced photography features, artificial intelligence actions and augmented reality applications, which would take far too much time to deal with today 's phones. The 5G technology will also allow cars and driverless buses to talk to each other, as well as surrounding objects, such as smart street lights.

Samsung has announced that it will introduce a 5G phone for Verizon, AT & T and other wireless service providers in the first half of 2019. A version of the Galaxy S10 is expected to come with 5G connectivity. Phones. 5G components are expensive and the service is not yet available in all markets. So, do not expect the 5G version to be cheap.

Samsung relies heavily on Unpacked. That's why there is a lot to do.

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