We’ve previously heard that Samsung plans to bring forward the release of its flagship Galaxy S24 smartphones a month to January 2024. But now, thanks to a report from Korean site SBS Biz, we have a few more details of Samsung's plans as well as a potential date to pencil in your diary: Wednesday, January 17.
If past form is anything to go by, that means that the phones themselves will be available to buy two weeks later — February 2, if Samsung sticks to a Friday release day.
While the Galaxy S23 family arrived at an event on February 1 last year, Samsung will apparently go two weeks earlier. The site adds that once again, the unveiling will take place in San Francisco, highlighting the US as “Apple’s home market” with the suggestion being that it wants to keep the “iPhone 15 series in check” as well as make up for “sluggish” semiconductor sales performance.
The 17 January date is about the earliest point that Samsung could sensibly go at. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset isn’t yet available in any handsets you can buy, after all.
The first is likely to be the Xiaomi 14, and probably in December, but going in the saturated Christmas period is risky and would dampen sales of Samsung’s older handsets. Moving into January, the month kicks off with the CES trade show between the 9th and 12th, which could easily see Samsung overshadowed, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday falls on January 15.
That leaves the 17th as the best early time for Samsung to go — it may not be dramatically earlier than when the S23 premiered, but it’s some way ahead of 2017’s Galaxy S8 which was announced on March 29, and didn’t go on sale until April 21.
While Samsung has to wait for Qualcomm to plot its next devices, that doesn’t necessarily mean your phone will have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. As reported by The Elec, Qualcomm has confirmed it will only power the “majority market share” — which suggests that Samsung will continue to use Exynos in other regions.
One way of avoiding this? Buying the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which apparently has the Snapdragon chipset regardless of where you buy it — perhaps because its AI smarts are necessary for the phone’s upcoming camera superpower.
