Samsung Unpacked tonight: What to expect and where to watch it

It’s finally that time of the year again — time to feast our eyes on Samsung’s new gadgets. It feels like just yesterday that we got to play with the Galaxy Note 10. Now it’s time to see what else Samsung has been up to. 

Galaxy S20 range

First of all (and most importantly), we’ll definitely get some new smartphones. Just how smart they’ll be is debatable, but we’re betting on pretty smart. 

In addition to the Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus, we’re expecting Samsung to announce a Galaxy S20 Ultra handset. This phone should be absolutely bonkers, and we reported on some of the early leaked specs before. But this device will likely tout some impressive specs like 5G-capability and 512GB internal storage and support for up to 1TB SD-cards. 

The base Galaxy S20 will be powerful too, boasting the company’s own Exynos 990 chip in South Africa and Europe and some other territories, while it’ll use Qualcomm’s newly-announced Snapdragon 865 chip in the US. Both these 7nm processors promise a bump in performance over their respective predecessors. Some rumours suggest that devices may have internal storage ranging up to 1TB — but we’ll have to see that to believe it. 

Then we’re not quite sure whether Samsung will announce a budget-version of the S20 as we saw with the S10e. The company announced some budget devices a few weeks ago, so it is very possible that the base S20 will serve as the budget option. 

Galaxy Z Flip

Beyond the Galaxy S20 series, Samsung will also debut another foldable phone named the Z Flip. We’ve covered some previous leaks, so there’s a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’ll be a clamshell-design, somewhat like the Motorola Razr debuted late last year. Just it’s made by Samsung. 

The Galaxy Z Flip folds along its horizontal axis with a 6.7in internal, foldable display. The folding OLED panel is FHD+ and has a 22:9 aspect ratio. Apparently it’ll be its first foldable display that’s made from ultra-thin plastic in lieu of POLED. There’s also a tiny outer display that’s about 1in in size, just big enough to show notifications and the time. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 855+, 8GB of RAM, and has a 3,300 mAh battery too.

We are most excited to find out what this flip-phone (you can’t argue that it is one) will cost. The Galaxy Fold is hella expensive, and we would like a more affordable foldable from Samsung. 

Galaxy Buds+

Honestly, we didn’t know the Galaxy Buds+ were on the lineup for tonight, but now we suspect they’ll be one of the highlights. A recent YouTube review of the buds gave away everything we want to know. 

According to WinFuture’s Roland Quandt, one of the most significant changes is larger batteries in the actual buds that should promise longer listening time. Each bud will have an 85mAh battery this time around, and according to Samsung, this’ll increase playtime from six hours to 11 hours. The case will apparently hold another 11 hours of charge to keep you topped up. 

In the dude’s follow-up tweets, he mentions that the battery life had dropped to 54% after “about 3.5 hours of loud punk rock music.” Which doesn’t add up to the proposed 11 hours… But maybe it’s in need of proper Stuff testing to get better results (wink, wink, Samsung).

We do expect better audio quality this time around, seeing as even lower-budget true wireless buds these days have brilliant audio quality. According to the review, the Galaxy Buds+ are fitted with two drivers, one tweeter and one woofer in each, instead of only one like in the Galaxy Buds.

Heads-up

Samsung’s Unpacked is scheduled for tonight (11 Feb) 9 pm South African time, and will be simulcast from San Francisco where the announcements will be made. You can check out the live stream right here on Samsung’s website and on various social channels.