The report card for Samsung in 2018 had winner all over it. The South Korean company stuck to its design philosophy and worked on three milestones on the camera front. Before coming to how 2019 would be, a recap.
First came the Galaxy S9 and S9+ in February 2018, which changed the way phone cameras are perceived — a wide-angle rear camera is on both the models and the 12MP camera has the first variable aperture fitted to a smartphone, which physically switches between an f-stop of 1.5 for low-light photography and an f-stop of 2.4 for shooting outdoors. The second milestone was in September, the Galaxy A7 with a triple camera set-up on the back. And the third took the benchmark higher with a quad-camera set-up on the Galaxy A9 (an 8MP, 120-degree wide angle lens; a 10MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom; a 24MP main lens; and a 5MP depth camera).
The other big announcement of 2018 will bear fruit this year. In July, the company had announced the expansion of its Noida factory. By 2020, this factory will produce 120 million phones every year, which means 14,000 phones every hour. “This is a shining example of India’s innovation and manufacturing power. We went from from Make in India to Make for India. Now we are expanding it to Make for World. Some of our best global innovations are coming out of India’s R&D centre,” said DJ Koh, president and CEO, head of IT & mobile communications division, Samsung Electronics.
The Telegraph
The Telegraph managed to access an image of a smartphone from the upcoming M series of devices Sourced by the Telegraph
According to sources in the industry, Samsung India’s first major launch could be as early as in January. It will be much more than one smartphone; it will be a new series (Galaxy M) of smartphones with a clear focus on millennials. According to dealers, the new smartphones in the series would be the Galaxy M10 and M20 and they will come with “Infinity V” display with a V-cut. The display was first announced during Samsung Developers Conference in November.
Some dealers who have seen the Galaxy M smartphones said they would come with industry-leading features and specs — a 6.4-inch display with dual real cameras. Some phones could come with ultra-wide capability too.
Dealers add that Samsung is going to pack these phones with bigger batteries, probably the “largest ever” on any Samsung smartphone.
The phones have been designed after months of R&D carried out by Samsung India.
Of course, the party will not stop for the company after the launch. There will also be the debut of Samsung’s next flagship phone, the Galaxy S10, in February. And, of course, there is the foldable phone, of which the world got a brief glimpse when Justin Denison, a senior vice-president of mobile product marketing, showed — in San Francisco — a prototype with a screen he said measured 7.3 inches diagonally.
