The Samsung Galaxy S line is one of the most mature in Android circles. The original Samsung Galaxy S appeared in 2010 and has been succeeded by a series of sequentially numbered devices, culminating in the sixth generation Galaxy S6 model that was introduced earlier this year. Other manufacturers have been building Android devices for as long as Samsung, or in some cases for longer but have changed the name or status of the device. The Samsung Galaxy S has always been Samsung’s everyday flagship Android device, with the Note branded devices being the phablet side of the smartphone business. Now, Samsung have produced an infographic highlighting the changing face and wallpaper of the Galaxy S range over the years.
Over the years, the Galaxy S line up has a number of constants. The first is that the System-on-Chip, or SoC, has been there or thereabouts at the top of the smartphone game when the device was introduced. In 2010, the original Galaxy S launched with a 1 GHz processor, a 5MP rear camera and a 4.0-inch AMOLED screen. And Samsung introduced some beautiful wallpapers to the Galaxy S including the golden city glowing image that highlighted the AMOLED technology behind the display screen. The Samsung Galaxy S II was one of the first Android devices with a dual-core processor, which at the time offered blazingly fast performance for a smartphone: to this end, Samsung used a dynamic wallpaper that highlighted how powerful and fast the Galaxy S II is.
In 2012, Samsung had smoothed and softened the Galaxy S range with the Galaxy S III and the software had a number of important tweaks with a Nature UI layer added to TouchWiz. The stock wallpapers turned into a natural theme as did the sound effects, with water dripping noises for the lock screen as one example. For 2013’s Galaxy S4, Samsung introduced the concept that the Galaxy S4 was not just a smartphone but a life companion and the stock wallpapers were changed to show this, including the balloon image, showing in the infographic below. The 2014 Galaxy S5 introduced waterproofing and at the time the most powerful variant of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, clocked at 2.5 GHz; Samsung chose a “diamond cut” image as the stock wallpaper. Finally, for 2015 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Samsung’s stock wallpapers are considered to be futuristic and fluid, in line with the new device.
