Forget February. Just erase it from your mind. If that’s when your cellular contract expires and you’d been hoping you might trade up for a spanking new Samsung Galaxy S5, just dash those hopes, because April is the new February.
That would be according to Samsung’s Lee Young Hee, the executive VP of mobile, who confided to Bloomberg that the Galaxy S5 will be available by April, and that Samsung’s looking into eye-scanning tech to possibly (repeat, possibly) ship with the phone.
Technically speaking, “by April” could mean anytime between now and April, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up: Hee told Bloomberg “We’ve been announcing our first flagship model in the first half of each year, around March and April, and we are still targeting for release around that time.” So perhaps announced as early as March, just like the S4, then shipping in April, also just like the S4, which wasn’t widely available until April 28, 2013.
Galaxy Gear fans should look for a smartwatch successor in this timeframe, too. Hee says it’ll ship with “more advanced functions” (naturally) and that “the bulky design will also be improved.” Fingers crossed the company’s planning to improve more than merely those two things, because the Gear’s problems were all over the place, from its troublesome interface to its abysmal battery life to its dearth of applications. It was as if Samsung decided “let’s sell a smartwatch to say we have a smartwatch” — which is precisely why you wouldn’t want to buy a smartwatch.
The Bloomberg piece juxtaposes Hee’s comments about Samsung’s exploration of iris recognition technology with a reference to Apple’s iPhone 5s fingerprint reader, implying the eye-scanner could be a reactionary move, designed to capitalize on escalating awareness of and sensitivity to security measures.
“Many people are fanatical about iris recognition technology,” Lee told Bloomberg at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, but added that Samsung is still studying the technology and can’t confirm it will definitely be in the S5.