While the Samsung Galaxy S4 may be among the best selling smartphones, it is reportedly not meeting the South Korean manufacturer’s own sales targets. According to South Korea’s Naver news agency, this may force Samsung to move up the launch date of its successor, the Galaxy S5. It could do so as early as January 2014. An announcement at CES is one option but it is more likely that Samsung would again hold an event of its own sometime after CES.
Little is known about the Samsung Galaxy S5 itself but rumours have already been swirling about what it could come with. Between them, they suggest that Samsung’s next flagship device will drop its plastic case in favour of a metal chassis and will come with a 64-bit processor (a new Exynos 5430chipset?) and a 16MP camera with optical image stabilization. This new camera may come with an ISOCELL sensor. This latest report also suggests that a fingerprint scanner may be in the cards.
While the report suggests that flagging Galaxy S4 are the reason Samsung is moving the launch date up, it should be pointed out that Galaxy S launches have followed each other by less than a year. The Galaxy SIII was announced in May 2012 and the Galaxy S4 followed in March 2013. Following that trend, a January announcement for the Galaxy S5 is not out of the question.
Moving up the Galaxy S5 launch would also allow Samsung to possibly possibly squeeze another launch between that of the Galaxy S5 and the next Galaxy Note in the fall. That new launch could well be for the rumoured higher end Project F smartphone.