When
Samsung unveils the new S10 smartphone at an event in San Francisco today, it
will mark the beginning of the 2019 round of World War S. That stands for
smartphone wars, although Samsung would like it to be all about the S.
Ever since
the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 in 2013, Samsung has held both technology
and thought leadership in the handset world. Back then, Apple’s iPhone 5 was
the last device from the American manufacturer that could lay claim to being
the best smartphone in the world. With the 2013 launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple
entered an era of incremental improvement, playing catch-up, and succumbing to
market trends driven by its competitors.
Six years
later, Samsung is fighting off the same threat. Its Chinese rival, Huawei,
suddenly wrested away leadership in the past year, with the P20 Pro and Mate 20
Pro regarded as at last equal to the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and Galaxy Note 9 –
if not superior. Certainly, from a cost perspective, Huawei took the lead with
its more competitive prices, and therefore more value for money.
Huawei also
succeeded where Apple failed: introducing more economical versions of its
flagship phones. The iPhone 5c, SE and XR have all been disappointments in the
sales department, mainly because the price difference was not massive enough to
attract lower-income users. In contrast, the Lite editions of the Huawei P9,
P10 and P20 have been huge successes, especially in South Africa.
Today, for
the first time in half a decade, Samsung goes into battle on a field laid out
by its competitors. It is expected to launch the Galaxy S10 Plus, S10 and S10
e, with the latter being the Samsung answer to the strategy of the iPhone XR
and Huawei P20 Lite.
Does this
mean Samsung is now in lock-step with its rivals, focused on matching their
strategies rather than running ahead of them?
It may seem
that way, but Samsung has a few tricks up its electronic sleeve. For example,
it is possible it will use the S10 launch to announce its coming range of
foldable phones, expected to be called the Galaxy X, Galaxy F, Galaxy
Fold or Galaxy Flex. It previewed the technology at a developer conference in
San Francisco last November, and this will be the ideal moment to reclaim
technology leadership by going into production with foldables – even if the S10
range itself does not shoot out the lights.
However,
the S10 handsets will look very different to their predecessors. First, before
switching on the phone, they will be notable by the introduction of what is
being called the punch-hole display, which breaks away from the current
trend of having a notch at the top of the phone to house front-facing cameras
and speakers. Instead, the punch-hole is a single round cut-out that will
contain the front camera. It is the key element of Samsung’s “Infinity
O” display – the O represents the punchhole – which will be the first
truly edge-to-edge display, on the sides and top.
The S10 range will use the new Samsung user interface, One
UI, also unveiled at the developer conference. It replaces the previous “skin”,
unimaginatively called the Samsung Experience, to introduce a strong new
interface brand.
One UI went live on the Note 8 last month, giving us a
foretaste, and giving Samsung a chance to iron out the bugs in the field. It is
a less cluttered interface, addressing one of the biggest complaints about most
manufacturer skins. Only Nokia and Google Pixel handsets offer pure Android in
the local market, but One UI is Samsung’s best compromise yet.
It introduces a new interaction area, in the bottom half,
reachable with the thumb, with a viewing area at the top, allowing the user to
work one-handed on the bottom area while still having apps or related content
visible above. One UI also improves gesture navigation – the phone picks up
hand movements without being touched – and notification management.
The S10 range will be the first phones to feature the latest
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip, at least for the South African and American
markets. That makes it 5G compatible, for when this next generation of mobile
broadband becomes available in these markets.
They will also be the first phones to feature Wi-Fi 6, the
next generation of the Wi-Fi mobile wireless standard. It will perform better
in congested areas, and data transfer will be up to 40% faster than the
previous generation.
The phones will be the first to use ultrasound for
fingerprint detection. If Samsung gets it right, this will make it the fastest
in-screen fingerprint sensor on the market, and allows for a little leeway if
one pushes the finger down slightly outside the fingerprint reader surface. It
does mean, however, that screen protectors will have to be redesigned to avoid
blocking the detection.
Not enough firsts? There are a few more.
Most notably, it will be the first phone range to feature 1 Terabyte
(TB) storage – that’s a thousand Gigabytes (GB) – at least for the
top-of-the-range devices. Samsung last month announced that it would be the
first manufacturer to make 1TB built-in onboard flash storage. Today, it
will deploy this massive advantage as it once again weaponises its technology
in the fight for smartphone domination.
- Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief
of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
