Samsung’s Galaxy A (2018) series of Android smartphones will feature a dedicated Bixby button, one industry insider from China said on Sunday, suggesting that all upcoming additions to the company’s mid-range lineup are set to succeed the feature introduced with this year’s high-end offerings from the South Korean tech giant. The source also suggested that the firm will commercialize its products come next year and won’t unveil them before early 2018, which is in line with Samsung’s usual product release strategy; with the holiday season being traditionally the most lucrative period for consumer electronics manufacturers, Samsung is likely to go all out with promoting its existing offerings over the final quarter of the year before moving on to unveiling new devices in January and February.
No other details on the matter were provided by the source, though the Galaxy A (2018) lineup has already been the subject of numerous rumors that emerged on the World Wide Web in recent months. The Seoul-based company is said to be preparing entirely new mobile chips for its next offerings, in addition to considering the idea of equipping them with bezel-less Infinity Display panels, industry insiders said earlier this year. Many features of the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, and Galaxy Note 8 are hence expected to trickle down to Samsung’s main mid-range phone series come next year and the same will presumably hold true for the Galaxy C (2018) lineup which traditionally consists of devices which are just one tier below Samsung’s most premium smartphones.
The company’s next-generation handset family will supposedly entail the Galaxy A3 (2018), Galaxy A5 (2018), and the Galaxy A7 (2018), though it remains to be seen whether Samsung opts for some more creative official monikers. The South Korean original equipment manufacturer traditionally hosts its own events for launching the Galaxy A-series devices and the same will presumably hold true this year. The Galaxy A (2017) family was officially unveiled this January and the lineup that succeeds it may be launched around the same time next year before hitting the market in late winter or early spring. The upcoming devices are likely to be sold in the West as Samsung‘s main mid-range offerings and retail for between $400 and $600, depending on the exact model and specific market.