The Galaxy S9 is still 4-6 months away, but rumors about the device have started gaining steam. Earlier, we saw a few leaks popping up on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. Samsung has been granted patents that the rumor mill claims could be implemented on the upcoming S9. However, these rumors don’t bring the next-gen flagship to life. Noted designer and Twitter tipster Benjamin Geskin has come up with an early Galaxy S9 render that offers a sneak peek into what the phone might look like.
Bezels get slimmer than ever before
Geskin’s Galaxy S9 render looks gorgeous. It retains Samsung’s bezel-less Infinity display, but the bezels at the top and bottom have become slimmer than before. There is no physical home button. The bottom bezel is negligible, but the top one is kept slightly thicker to accommodate the front camera, iris scanner, ear speaker, and other sensors. The only way to eliminate the top bezel would be to create an iPhone X-like notch.
https://twitter.com/VenyaGeskin1/status/925509177941905410
The Galaxy S9 render gives a more ergonomic location to the fingerprint reader
For the back panel design, Geskin seems to have taken cues from a recent report by Chinese tipster Ice Universe that the phone’s back “will change a lot.” Ice Universe has a reliable track record when it comes to leaks about Samsung’s unannounced flagship smartphones. The tipster had accurately leaked the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 features weeks before launch.
Another report from China has also claimed that Samsung would revamp the Galaxy S9 rear panel to place the fingerprint reader in a more ergonomic position. The awkward placement of the fingerprint scanner next to the rear camera on the Galaxy S8 and Note 8 had been one of the biggest complaints about Samsung’s flagship smartphones.
The first thing you’ll notice on the back of Geskin’s Galaxy S9 render is a vertically arranged dual camera system. The phone is widely expected to sport a dual camera considering Apple, LG, Huawei, and Samsung itself have launched phones with dual cameras. Google’s Pixel 2 lacks a dual camera but offers the same capabilities via software algorithms.
Right below the dual camera is a heart rate sensor and an LED flash. Below them, you can see a fingerprint sensor. The placement will make it easier for users to reach the fingerprint reader compared to the Galaxy S8, which has the scanner placed near the top of the back panel next to the camera. Ice Universe and KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo both have confirmed that the Galaxy S9 would keep the rear fingerprint scanner rather than switching to the in-display fingerprint solution.
Galaxy S9 rumored specs
Earlier, Benjamin Geskin has said that the Galaxy S9 would pack a huge 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The phone will also have a microSD card slot for external memory expansion. The US and Chinese models of the device would run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 SoC, which would come with Qualcomm’s in-house neural engine to handle AI tasks.
Other countries will get the Exynos 9810-powered version of the device. Samsung doesn’t have its own neural engine. So, it has made a huge investment in China-based AI startup DeePhi Tech to develop a neural engine for the Exynos version of the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. Neural engines perform specific tasks at much faster speeds while reducing the load on the main processor cores.
According to GizmoChina, Qualcomm will officially unveil the Snapdragon 845 chipset at the Snapdragon Technology Summit, which is scheduled to take place from Dec.4 to Dec.8 in Hawaii. The Snapdragon 845 will be built using Samsung’s 10nm LPE manufacturing process. It would consist of Cortex A75 and A53 cores, as well as Adreno 630 GPU.
The Galaxy S9 will likely be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in late February in Barcelona. The phone is expected to hit the store shelves in March next year. There were rumors that Samsung would launch the Galaxy S9 in January to take on the iPhone X, but it’s unlikely to happen. Samsung wouldn’t want to rush things and face another Galaxy Note 7-like nightmare.
