LAS VEGAS—Samsung will announce the Galaxy S10 at 11 a.m. PT in San Francisco, according to an invite the company sent out today.
The invite for the latest Samsung Unpacked doesn't hint a lot at the Galaxy S10's features; for more on that, check out this S10 rumor roundup. Instead, there's just a big "10" on the invite, making it clear what we'll be seeing.
Could we speculate further? Well, maybe the phone comes in blue and purple, and is … really thin? If you have some ideas based on this invite, please put them in the comments below.
Here at CES, Samsung showed off a set of Galaxy phones at the convention center with an empty space where the S10 should go:
Galaxy evolution from @Samsung at #ces2019 pic.twitter.com/l49bIO2aBT — Consumer Electronic Sascha (@saschasegan) January 8, 2019
We're expecting to see three 4G versions of the Galaxy S10 at the event—a lite, medium, and pro version—but maybe not the 5G phone Verizon demonstrated at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Technology Summit last month. Our sources say the 5G phone could be teased at Unpacked and then held back for the big Mobile World Congress trade show, which starts just a few days later and will be full of 5G announcements.
Samsung has never had a major Galaxy launch primarily in San Francisco before; these events have typically been in New York or at MWC in Barcelona. By getting the launch away from MWC, Samsung gets to seize the day and keeps its announcement away from all of the expected carrier 5G announcements.
Shifting from New York to San Francisco may be a sign that Samsung is trying to push its own developer partnerships, especially as it has struggled to make Bixby, its voice assistant, relevant this week at a CES trade show where Alexa and Google Assistant have dominated the space.
Samsung will live stream the announcement so folks who aren't in San Francisco will be able to watch, at Samsung.com.