ISSUE 46 • ANDROID ADVISOR 65PREVIEWThough we are fairly certain the Snapdragon
845 will feature in the Galaxy S9, at least in the UK,
we do not yet know whether Samsung again holds
the exclusive on the chip. If it does, we may see
another March launch event.
In 2018 there is talk of LG announcing its rival G7
early in January at CES 2018, which Samsung may
choose to copy. There are some rumours to back up
this theory – Samsung began shipping OLED panels
two months early in November, and the Galaxy S9
was (allegedly) first spotted on Geekbench way back
in July – but the company has denied that a January
unveiling is likely. (To be fair, if the G7 really is coming
early we should expect the company to start revealing
its features via press releases in the very near future.)
VentureBeat sources claim the phones will be on
show at CES 2018. It’s usually a very reliable source,
though we suspect it might merely mean that the
Galaxy S9 will be seen by some people behind
closed doors at CES.
Price
The Galaxy S8 and S8+ were Samsung’s most
expensive S-series phones yet at £689 and £779
respectively. Part of this extra cost can be attributed
to the new features, but finances following both
Brexit and the Note 7 disaster have almost certainly
come into play here, too.
Until this year, Samsung always kept its pricing
reasonably constant, and in line with other flagship
phone makers. For that reason we’d be surprised to
see the price go any higher than the current RRP.