Once Samsung unveils its new S10 smartphone at an event in San Francisco today, it will mark the start of a new “World War” among smartphone manufacturers.
Since the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 in 2013, Samsung has held both the technology and the leadership position in the world of mobile devices. At the time, Apple's iPhone 5 was the last device from the company that could claim to be the best smartphone in the world. With the launch of the iPhone 5s in 2013, Apple entered an era of incremental improvement, moving to save money and succumbing to market trends driven by its competitors.
Six years later, Samsung is fighting the same threat. Its Chinese rival, Huawei, changed the rules of the game last year, with the P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro being considered on par with the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and Galaxy Note 9 – if not better. Of course, in terms of cost, Huawei has broken new ground with its competitive pricing.
Huawei has also succeeded where Apple has failed: introducing more affordable versions of its phones. The iPhone 5c, SE, and XR were all disappointing for Apple's sales department, largely because the price wasn't attractive enough to attract lower-income users. In contrast, the Lite versions of the Huawei P9, P10, and P20 were huge hits, especially in South Africa.
Today, for the first time in half a decade, Samsung is entering the battle defined by its competitors. It is expected to launch the Galaxy S10 Plus, S10 and S10 e, with the latter being Samsung's answer to the iPhone XR and Huawei P20 Lite.
However, the S10 phones will be very different from their predecessors. First, the company will use a punch-hole display, which breaks away from the current trend of a notch at the top of the phone to house the front-facing cameras and speakers. Instead, the punch-hole is a single, round opening that will house the front-facing camera. It's the key element of Samsung's "Infinity O" display — the O stands for punch-hole.
The S10 series will use Samsung's new user interface, One UI, which was also unveiled at the developer conference. It replaces the previous interface to introduce a brand new one.
It's a less cluttered interface, addressing one of the biggest user complaints. Only Nokia and Google Pixel phones offer pure Android on the market, but One UI is Samsung's best offering yet.
It introduces a new interaction area, on the bottom half of the device, accessible by the thumb, with a viewing area at the top, allowing the user to work with their hand in the lower area while still having apps or related content visible above. One UI also allows for device management without having to touch the screen.
The S10 series will be the first phones to feature the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, at least for the South African and American markets. This makes them 5G compatible when the next generation of mobile broadband becomes available in those markets.
They will also be the first phones to feature Wi-Fi 6, the next generation of the Wi-Fi wireless standard. Data transfers will be up to 40% faster than the previous generation.
The phones will be the first to use ultrasound for fingerprint scanning. If Samsung gets it right, that would make it the fastest fingerprint sensor on the market. However, that means screen protectors will have to be redesigned to avoid interfering with the scanning.
The new models will be the first to feature 1 Terabyte (TB) of storage – that’s one thousand Gigabytes (GB). Samsung last month announced it would be the first manufacturer to include a 1TB flash drive in its devices.
