Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus shown off in leaked image
Justin Herrick
The leak you've been waiting for has finally arrived. Evan Blass, the mobile industry insider at VentureBeat, just went live with a major leak showing the Galaxy S9 and included additional details on Samsung's 2018 flagship set to be announced and released in the coming weeks. While everything will be made official by Samsung at a launch event in late February, the mobile industry insider basically revealed the important stuff to know.
Samsung's Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ won't differ much from their predecessors, and the leaked image makes that very clear. The new flagship will have also an Infinity Display with identical sizing. If anything, it appears as that the top and bottom bezels have been further slimmed.
Here's the image, courtesy of VentureBeat:
Measurements for the displays come in at 5.8 inches and 6.2 inches, both having a variety of cutouts at the top for the 8MP front-facing camera and a number of sensors.
Inside the Galaxy S9 is 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, but the Galaxy S9+ raises those numbers to 6GB of 128GB. It's clear that Samsung would like to create separation between the two models in order to drive sales of the more expensive choice.
As expected, Blass says Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 will be used in the United States and China as the rest of the wrold gets Samsung's Exynos 9810 for the processor.
Although we don't see the back of either phone, we all know what's there. The smaller model will have a single camera, 12MP, while the Plus model adds a second 12MP lens. Both models will have "super slow-mo" (recording video at 480 frames per second in 720p) and variable aperture, the latter enabling users to switch between f/2.4 and f/1.5. Beneath the camera setup will be a fingerprint scanner.
And, for the audio buffs, the bottom-facing speakers have been upgraded to stereo quality. AKG, a subsidiary of the Samsung-owned Harman, will also included premium earbuds to connect through the dedicated auxiliary port. The Galaxy S9 won't force users to rely solely upon a USB-C port unlike many competitors.
Samsung plans to launch the Galaxy S9 next month at MWC 2018, and the announcement should be followed by a release date only a few weeks later. It appears that the release date is set for March 16 considering the date shown on the units in the leaked image align with a previous report. In recent years, Samsung hasn't waited long to go from announcing to releasing a new flagship. So the Galaxy S9 should be available globally less than three weeks from debuting in Barcelona.
There you have it. Pretty much every piece of information about Samsung's next flagship has been revealed. Now the world just has to wait for the company's own unveiling to truly judge the Galaxy S9 against Apple's iPhone X.
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