With the Samsung Galaxy S8 released last year on 21st April 2017, we are only a couple of months away from Samsung revealing their next flagship smartphone and first of 2018: the S9. Of course, rumors are just rumors with many of them without any strong evidence supporting them (just speculation). However, considering the way Samsung work on smartphones and the general unveiling of smartphones at CES and at the latter stage of 2017, we can gain a picture as to the type of features we should expect to see on the S9: here are some these that have been circulating the internet.

Snapdragon 845 Processor

The S9 and S9+ will both rock a 7 nanometre mobile processor from Snapdragon, labelled the 845. This the next flagship processor from Snapdragon to proceed the 835, which featured on flagship smartphones in 2017.

Depending on what terrority in the US you purchase the S9 will depend if you have the 7nm Snapdragon 845 or the Exynos 9810, which is a 10nm processor (personally, it would make a lot more sense to go for the Snapdragon version of the smartphone).

Lack of Fingerprint Sensor Under Screen

Although it was seen at CES 2018 in Las Vegas that Vivo was the first smartphone manufacturer to successfully embed the finger print sensor underneath the touch screen, the latest rumors surrounding the S9 are that it will not have such technology. For Samsung, the technology is still not readily available for them to implement into the S9. Instead, we can expect it to come on a smartphone from Samsung later in the year, such as on the Note 9.

This is severely disappointing as the excuse that seems to be the case this year is the exact same excuse as last year. What is particularly frustrating is the fact there are other tech companies, such as Vivo, that are showing off the technology and that it works very well too.

Dual Camera for S9+

The S9 is expected to maintain a single lens camera, possibly with the addition of software portrait mode to blur out the background and not the subject (similar to what the Google Pixel and Pixel 2 currently does). With the S9+, it will be upgraded to dual cameras on the rear, similar to the Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. With this, both the cameras of the S9 and S9+ will be significantly upgraded when compared to the S8 and S8+.

Launch – End of February

Although the S8 was launched at the latter parts to March last year, it is expected the the launch of the S9 will be a little earlier this year, being roughly around the end of February.

Overall, the Samsung S9 seems to be an improvement on the S8, but not a huge change nonetheless. The lack of a finger print sensor under the screen should make clear that the phones are very similar, albeit the improved internals and cameras.