Google’s got ‘something exciting’ coming for Samsung’s Galaxy S20 launch event
Samsung’s Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Z Flip phone are widely expected to launch next week, and anticipation has been building for months about the new flip phone and what could be the most tricked-out smartphone of all time. Google just added to the excitement with a mysterious announcement of its own.
Google’s Android account tweeted an infinite regression video late Friday, in which the “A” in “Galaxy” appears as a box that says “Android.” And the “N” in “Android” appears as a box that says “Galaxy.”
“Something exciting is just around the corner. See you at Unpacked,” Google tweeted.
“Unpacked” is Samsung’s annual showcase event in which it announces the latest Galaxy S smartphone, in addition to some other new gadgets.
What could Google be talking about?
Flip-phone support
Folding phones are a growing trend. The Motorola Razr, which went on sale Thursday, is making nostalgia nerds want to embrace the flip phone again. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold is weird, with its super-tiny front screen and square “tablet” screen, but it’s on shelves. And the Galaxy Z Flip is rumored to be a competitor to the Razr that features top-of-the-line hardware and chips (unlike, you know, the Razr).
Google announced it would start supporting folding phones in November 2018. But at the time most phones were multi-screen gadgets, like the Fold, which allowed people to transfer what was on a smaller screen onto a big screen. The latest trend is flip phones with a far more limited display on the front and a super-tall, bendy screen on the inside.
Perhaps Google has some software tricks up its sleeve for the Z Flip.
Stock Android
Hardware has always been Samsung’s bread and butter, but Samsung has gotten much better at making software. The newish One UI is leaps and bounds better than TouchWiz. But … it’s still not as good as the stock version of Android that Google cooks up for it its Pixel phones.
Samsung has at times embraced Google’s native, unvarnished version of Android. It made a “Google Play Edition” of some Galaxy S phones, which shipped free of the sometimes outlandish bells and whistles Samsung adds to its gadgets. It also made the Galaxy Nexus, a precursor to Google’s Pixel phones.
Despite it’s improvements, software continues to be Samsung’s Achilles’ heel, and perhaps it will once again embrace Google’s cleaner design for hardcore smartphone fans.
Something wild
If the rumors are true, and they usually are, the new Galaxy S phone is going to be a stunning leap ahead from last year’s S10. That may be why Samsung apparently decided to skip 10 numbers and call its next phone the Galaxy S20.
The phone is expected to be jam-packed with specs: A buttery-smooth screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip, 16 GB of RAM and four cameras — including a 64-megapixel telephoto lens and a 108-megapixel sensor. To power all that, the S20 is rumored to have a 5,000 milliampere-hour batter.
Holy shmoley. Perhaps Google will release a specialized version of Android to play nicely with these features.
