According to a new report, the Galaxy S4 isn’t selling so well anymore. There were early reports, soon after the S4 came out, that its sales were lower than Samsung expected, and with the arrival of phones such as Moto X, iPhone 5S, LG G2, Xperia Z1, and soon the much awaited Nexus 5, Samsung may be in a position that’s worse than they expected, and it may me forced to launch its “next-gen phone” with a 16MP camera and OIS sooner than it had planned to.
Samsung has recently said that it’s working on 64 bit phones, too, but it’s unclear whether that’s a sure thing for the Galaxy S5 or not, especially if they will launch it late winter or very early spring (March). It seems a little early for everyone else to move to 64-bit, because most of them, if not all, are also changing the architecture of the CPU core, so they will have brand new CPU cores for the ARMv8 64-bit architecture.
Apple, in a way, took a shortcut, because it looks like they used more or less the same CPU design as last year, but retrofitted it for ARMv8. They also made the chip at the same old 28nm process, while ARMv8 chips are expected to arrive at 20nm. So new CPU cores, plus new process node, on top of a brand new architecture, and you have all the reasons in the world to see why everyone else will have a to wait a bit until their 64-bit chips are ready (around mid year or even late than that, depending on whether they’re using their own custom CPU cores like Qualcomm, or using ARM’s stock CPU’s).
If Samsung announces the Galaxy S5 in January, and then releases it in February, or at most March, that still seems quite early for this move to 64 bit. Releasing it without being 64-bit, would also be a mistake, and that means you’d have to wait a whole other years until 2015 to get a 64-bit Galaxy S6, or at least until fall to get a 64-bit Galaxy Note 4, which may be too large for most.
There’s also a 3rd possibility, and perhaps the most likely one. Samsung may be playing the media, and ultimately all of us, to make everyone think twice about purchasing that new iPhone, or LG G2, or Xperia Z1 or Nexus 5, and “just wait” to see what’s happening at CES, and if they are really announcing the Galaxy S5 there.
Then, at CES, they could just say that they aren’t announcing the Galaxy S5 then, but they will have a “big announcement” in a couple of months. Then, people who have already waited for it, might decide to just wait another two months, and then another month for the actual launch of the Galaxy S5. Samsung has learned quite a few tricks in showing leaks to the media ever since before the Galaxy S3, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if they played this game right now. You decide whether it’s worth to see if this rumor is true or not.
Image credit: concept-phones.com