Samsung to Announce Galaxy S9 at Mobile World Congress in February

Samsung is the current king of Android with sales that far outpace the competition. There are also dedicated Samsung fans who wait for the new Galaxy S phone every year, then jump on it the instant it’s available. They might not have to wait much longer this year. Samsung’s mobile chief has confirmed the Galaxy S9 will appear at Mobile World Congress in February.

Previous rumors pointed to a surprise Galaxy S9 unveiling at CES, which is underway now. However, Samsung is on hand not with the hotly anticipated new Galaxy phone, but with TV, smart home devices, and appliances — lots and lots of appliances. The only explicitly mobile news from Samsung at CES was the announcement of the Exynos 9810 ARM system-on-a-chip (SoC), which will probably debut in the international version of the Galaxy S9 (the US version will have an updated Snapdragon chip). The Exynos 9810 is an octa-core chip with four low-power Cortex-A55 cores and four custom high-performance cores. It supports gigabit LTE and has a new GPU with 20 percent more power than the last-gen chip.

When asked about the Galaxy S9 reveal, Samsung’s mobile division president DJ Koh said the phone would be announced at Mobile World Congress in late February. MWC takes place in Barcelona, Spain every year, and is one of the most important mobile trade shows of the year. Several of Samsung’s past phones have been announced there.

We expect the Galaxy S9 to sport another curved OLED panel with slightly upgraded specs. Samsung is way out in the lead when it comes to display technology, so it doesn’t have to do much to stay on top. The S9 will likely also gain the dual camera array that debuted on the Galaxy Note 8 last year.

Samsung has reportedly been working hard to develop in-display fingerprint readers for its phones, but it’s unlikely the Galaxy S9 will be the first with that feature. Based on the updated Galaxy A-series budget phones, we expect the Galaxy S9 will get a repositioned fingerprint sensor on the back that’s below the camera instead of next to it. The sensor location on the Galaxy S8 is just silly.

The Galaxy S9 reveal will come one month earlier than the GS8 last year. If the schedule holds, then we should see the phone launch about a month after Mobile World Congress, which runs from February 26th to March 1st.

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