With the death of Google’s Project Ara and the damp squib that was the LG G5, you’d think phone makers had given up on the idea of modular phones. No one has nailed the concept just yet, but Samsung MIGHT be having a stab at it with next year’s Galaxy S9 release.

This is a big, fat, unverified rumour at the time of writing, so, please, take all of this with a pinch of salt, as always. According to Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin, Samsung is limbering up for some pretty significant design changes for the Galaxy S9.

Murtazin insists that this modular design is not yet final, and is still being experimented with, so it is likely – probably 100% likely – it will not actually happen. However, the fact that Samsung is testing it shows there might be some merit in the concept.

I mean, if you could get it right, the upshot would be some pretty impressive revenue streams, as users could, theoretically, update core aspects of the phone. Things like the camera, for instance, or the audio output. And Samsung really does like selling things – just look at its product portfolio.

The Essential Phone has a novel, wireless approach to this concept, whereby you can attach a 360º camera to the handset for capturing and creating VR content. Whether more mods come out, obviously, depends on the success of the handset and overall demand for new things.

Motorola’s method of doing modular stuff is pretty decent too, though the company – Lenovo, by the way – doesn’t really have the reach to make something like this truly mainstream, which is what it needs to be in order to really catch on with consumers.

Basically, to get modular phones into the mainstream you need a company like Apple or Samsung to take the lead. Perhaps this is Samsung’s thinking: get in there before Apple does and, potentially, corner the market. If it fails, it fails, but at least Samsung would have been first, right?

Beyond this rather spurious rumour, the Galaxy S9 is confirmed to be the first handset to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 CPU. The Galaxy S9, like the Galaxy S8, will launch in Q1 of 2018, alongside new handsets from LG and Huawei in and around MWC.

We’re still yet to see the oft-talked about Samsung Galaxy X as well and, with the Galaxy Note 8 release now under way, it is difficult to see where Samsung could possibly fit this phone in? Perhaps it could drop around late-Q2 2018 in the lull between the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy Note 9?

Either way, you can expect plenty of leaks and rumours between now and then.