Samsung has confirmed it will hold its next Galaxy Unpacked event at 5am (AEDT) on January 18. It is expected to use this event to reveal the Galaxy S24 family, which is once again tipped to have three phones: the standard Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24 Plus, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Samsung typically reveals its new Galaxy flagship phones at the start of each year, but it typically does so in February, rather than January.
Pre-orders will start after the event, with fine print on the Samsung Australia website suggesting the pre-sale period will end on February 6. This would make February 7 the on-sale date for the Galaxy S24 family.
If you pre-register on the site, Samsung will give you a $200 eVoucher to be used during the first 72 hours of pre-order. This voucher can't be used on the new phones, however. It's only redeemable on Galaxy tablets, watches, earbuds, and other select accessories. The voucher needs to be used in the same transaction as your Galaxy S24 purchase.
Samsung's teaser for the event makes the claim the "Galaxy AI is coming". Galaxy AI will likely be based on Gauss, Samsung's generative AI model that is designed to compete with the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard. It is capable of tasks like drafting emails, summarising documents, and translations, but we don't know exactly how this functionality will work on a Samsung phone yet.
Otherwise, we're not expecting too many surprises during Samsung's event. The spec sheets for all three phones have already leaked, and they're not too different from last year's models. To start, there are faster processors under the hood for all three phones. The Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus are both 0.1 inches larger, and have a little extra battery capacity. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24 Ultra swaps out last year's 10MP 10x optical zoom lens for a 50MP 5x lens and is expected to feature a titanium build.