There’s a great deal of positivity surrounding Samsung’s 10th anniversary Galaxy S10, and with good reason. The company’s new flagship will be heavily redesigned, match the best iPhone X feature, deliver a cutting-edge in-display fingerprint reader and (potentially) even fast Android updates. But sadly, we now know the Galaxy S10’s biggest upgrade comes with a nasty surprise…
‘Great Secret Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.
The bearer of this bad news is The Bell, a consistently reliable site from Samsung’s home country of South Korea. In a new report, it confirms Samsung will limit the 5G capabilities built into Galaxy S10 to just one limited edition model of which production will be “negligible”.
The Bell specifies this as a maximum of 2 million units out of 40 million Galaxy S10 models produced in 2019. Pricing of the Galaxy S10+, the most expensive model, is also expected to be almost $1,000 so the 5G limited edition is likely to make it the most expensive mass-market phone Samsung has ever released.
And this carries significant repercussions.
While 5G networks will only start rolling out towards the end of this year, and certainly won’t be widespread when the Galaxy S10 launches in early 2019, they will scale rapidly as carriers battle one another to boast who has the best coverage. Given the Galaxy S10 will be a circa-$1,000 multi-year investment, buying such an expensive phone next year without 5G seems foolhardy.
What’s more, Samsung has history here.
When the Galaxy S4 (model I9500) launched in 2013, it lacked the upcoming 4G standard and Samsung then sold a ‘Galaxy S4 LTE-A’ edition (I9506) at a higher price later that year. Early Galaxy S4 buyers were not impressed.
So what would motivate Samsung not to strip 5G from the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ when both variants of chipset the company uses (Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and its own Exynos range) will be 5G-capable? I suspect the news that Apple’s reliance on Intel modems means it won’t have 5G-capable iPhones next year either.
But this is no way to do business. With Android rivals expected to leap aboard 5G in 2019, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 may well be left behind, and that would be a great shame. After all, a 10th-anniversary launch should showcase Samsung’s vision for the future, not restrict a phone to the past…
‘Great Secret Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.
The bearer of this bad news is The Bell, a consistently reliable site from Samsung’s home country of South Korea. In a new report, it confirms Samsung will limit the 5G capabilities built into Galaxy S10 to just one limited edition model of which production will be “negligible”.
The Bell specifies this as a maximum of 2 million units out of 40 million Galaxy S10 models produced in 2019. Pricing of the Galaxy S10+, the most expensive model, is also expected to be almost $1,000 so the 5G limited edition is likely to make it the most expensive mass-market phone Samsung has ever released.
And this carries significant repercussions.
While 5G networks will only start rolling out towards the end of this year, and certainly won’t be widespread when the Galaxy S10 launches in early 2019, they will scale rapidly as carriers battle one another to boast who has the best coverage. Given the Galaxy S10 will be a circa-$1,000 multi-year investment, buying such an expensive phone next year without 5G seems foolhardy.
What’s more, Samsung has history here.
When the Galaxy S4 (model I9500) launched in 2013, it lacked the upcoming 4G standard and Samsung then sold a ‘Galaxy S4 LTE-A’ edition (I9506) at a higher price later that year. Early Galaxy S4 buyers were not impressed.
So what would motivate Samsung not to strip 5G from the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ when both variants of chipset the company uses (Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and its own Exynos range) will be 5G-capable? I suspect the news that Apple’s reliance on Intel modems means it won’t have 5G-capable iPhones next year either.
But this is no way to do business. With Android rivals expected to leap aboard 5G in 2019, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 may well be left behind, and that would be a great shame. After all, a 10th-anniversary launch should showcase Samsung’s vision for the future, not restrict a phone to the past…
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