Korean news sources claim that Samsung is prepping to launch a Galaxy S10 flagship in January 2019. The reports also allege that MWC 2019, which takes place in February, will see a flexible folding OLED phone - possibly the Samsung Galaxy X - as the star of the show.
The word comes via Korean publication The Bell, which states that Samsung has been in contact with manufacturing and component supply partners with requests to provide parts by November 2018 - giving time for production to gear up for a launch at the beginning of 2019. Allegedly the Galaxy X folding phone has had its codename changed from "Valley" to "Winner", which is being cited as an indication the project has moved from concept and towards production.
As far as the Galaxy S10 is concerned, the report suggests it'll debut at CES 2019 or at a standalone event during the same month - in our view the latter seems more likely given Samsung's past habits.
The Galaxy S10 news is interesting, but we find it difficult to get excited about the Galaxy X allegations considering we've been hearing the same thing for several years now and nothing of the sort has actually occured.
What is more important is this is the latest batch of info to suggest that Samsung will, for now, keep its Galaxy S flagship line distinct from its folding OLED plans - if a flexible and folding OLED Galaxy handset does indeed launch, it will be its own device and not also the Galaxy S10.
For the Galaxy S10's specs and features, not a great deal is known at this point. However, it is thought that Samsung will likely build more on the camera of the Galaxy S9 series. The variable aperture will likely stay, however, there's talk of Samsung working with Israeli firm Mantis Vision on some kind of 3D camera.
Samsung's been rumoured to make early year launches with previous Galaxy S flagships and usually they end up arriving between late February and some time in April/May. Although a January launch isn't outside the realms of possibility, we'd expect this to be the current plan but one that will likely face delays as Samsung tried to implement new features during the coming months.
A big question will surely be whether or not we'll finally see an in-display fingerprint scanner embedded inside the screen panel; this was rumoured on several of Samsung's recent phones and hasn't appeared due to technical difficulties. However, several OEMs and component suppliers have now produced working examples, so it is plausible Samsung could get something working this time.
Aside from this, we'd once again expect a large, edge-to-edge, 18.5:9 (or possibly even 19:9) aspect ratio Super AMOLED Infinity Display as well as new flagships CPUs from Samsung's own Exynos brand and Qualcomm's Snapdragon.
One thing which needs attention though is the battery. The Samsung Galaxy S8+ was the pinnacle of Samsung's battery performance to date. The Galaxy Note 8 was not quite as good, though still decent, while the Galaxy S9 series batteries took another turn for the worse. We'd like to see Samsung reclaiming its battery life crown.
It's also not clear from these new rumours whether there will also be a Galaxy S10+ alongside a smaller Galaxy S10. If Samsung is bringing a new Galaxy Note and the Galaxy X in the same year, it might look to simplify the portfolio, particularly as the Galaxy S Plus handsets from the last couple of years have been about the same size and feature set (aside from the S-Pen) as the Galaxy Note.
