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Galaxy S9 – Curious about Samsung’s strategy to launch Foldable Phone

Interests in Galaxy S9 and Note 9, which will be released soon, are growing. There are a lot of people who want to figure out in advance the features of Foldable Phone, which Samsung announced to be launched within this year, through Galaxy S9 and Note9. However, it is impossible to predict the specifications of the Foldable Phone with the contents that have been opened so far.

In general, Galaxy S9 does not seem to be much different, compared to the previous S8. The front fingerprint sensor, which has been anticipated since last year, may not apply, and it seems to adopt iris recognition and fingerprint sensor at the back side. Unlike the S8, which was noticed in the name of Infinity Display, it will not expect much different concept in the design part. The CPU will be equipped with Samsung’s Exynos 9810 chip, except for the US model.

So what is the strategy of the Galaxy series this year? Some say that iPhoneX’s sales volume is a failure, but if you consider adding iPhoneX to the 3-model lineup in the new 2-model lineup, Apple’s overall performance is a success. In the meantime, there seems to require a new strategy for the Galaxy flagship model, which was dominated by superior image quality with adopting OLED display.  The Galaxy S9 appears to have little change, except for a slight improvement in performance. Therefore, it is curious whether it might be Samsung’s planned intention to concentrate on launching the Foldable Phone.

<Spec Comparison for Galaxy flagship models>

Samsung Electronics, releases Galaxy S9 at MWC 2018

Samsung Electronics will unveil Galaxy S9, its next-generation strategic smartphone, at MWC 2018, held in Barcelona, Spain on February 25. Galaxy S9 is anticipated to be equipped with various features such as dual cameras for the first time at the Galaxy S series and intelligent scanning, so expectations for the Galaxy S9 are rising.

The Galaxy S series continued to increase in ppi and display area (DA), starting with the ‘Galaxy S’ in 2010. The first Galaxy S was introduced with 4 inch WVGA rigid OLED, with 235 ppi and 58% DA. For Galaxy S6 which is the first Galaxy S series adopted with flexible OLED, its ppi became more than doubled and DA was 70.7% increased by 22%, compared to Galaxy S.

<Evolution in ppi and DA for Galaxy S series>

Launched in 2017, the Galaxy S8 first extended the DA to 83.6% by removing the home button and minimizing the bezel for the first time on the OLED smart phone. Through these changes, Samsung Electronics introduced a full-screen OLED display.

According to the industry experts, Samsung Electronics is expected to implement full-screen by expanding DA to 93% with 5.8-inch OLED in Galaxy S9 to be unveiled at MWC 2018.

As the full-screen OLED smart phone has become very popular with consumers, Apple, LG, VIVO and Oppo have started to incorporate full-screen OLED into their flagship models. As a result, smart phones with full-screen OLEDs are expected to become main stream this year.

Meanwhile, it is estimated that 230 million units of flexible OLED panels will be shipped in 2018 according to the recently published ‘2018 OLED Panel Industry Report’. The size of OLEDs is expected to increase steadily for implementation of full screen. Moreover, the development direction for full screen is to be from current full screen or notch type (form of making holes in speaker and camera functions) to the form of real full-screen displays, in which they (speaker and camera parts) are not visible on the front display.

<Expected development direction for full-screen>