Now that the dopamine of CES 2024 has worn off, we need something else to carry us through the first month of the new year. Fortunately, we have Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked to look forward to, where the company will reveal what’s new with its next series of flagship smartphones. The Galaxy S24 and its device brethren will officially debut on Wednesday, Jan. 17, at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. The event streams live on Samsung’s YouTube page at 10:00 A.M. PT / 1:00 P.M. ET. Gizmodo will be there with boots on the ground.
What’s in store for the Galaxy S24?
You can always expect that Samsung will do something to improve the camera algorithms. And with the loud and proud “Galaxy AI” promotion in this year’s Unpacked teaser imagery, it’s clear that it’s coming for the new family of smartphones.
It will be another year of Zoom, as Samsung is expected to debut its new ISOCELL Zoom capabilities on the Galaxy S24. Samsung is still leading the pack with the farthest-reaching optical zoom on a mainstream smartphone. The Galaxy S23 Ultra was sharper than its predecessor, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Galaxy S24 Ultra improves from there. That Ultra smartphone might also come in a titanium finish, giving the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max an official competitor in the design game.
Pay close attention to the AI portion of the Samsung Unpacked event. There’s word that a new bot will live alongside Google’s Gemini on Samsung’s Android devices. The bot is supposedly called Gauss, after Carl Friedrich Gauss, an 18th- and 19th-century German mathematician and physicist, and like Google’s AI, there are plans to offer similar enhancements.
Special offers
If you are looking to “trade up” your smartphone this season and you’ve already decided you’re sticking with Samsung—before we’ve even had a chance to go hands-on—the company is offering $50 off for preorders made before Jan. 16. You can find more details at Samsung’s online storefront.
I usually don’t point out these deals, but I’ve been updating devices the last few years by trading them “up” to save on the total price. I’ve been pleased with the value so far. For those who are into the update-every-year cadence, it’ll be interesting to see the trade-in values as soon as the new Galaxy devices are announced.
