What to expect from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked January event

Samsung is about to launch new smartphone flagships, and we're so here for it.

The company's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year is scheduled for Wednesday, January 17. The live stream, which will be available on Samsung's website, starts at 1 p.m. ET.

Let's take a quick break here and note that this is very early in the year for a Samsung phone unveiling. The company typically launches its Galaxy S series smartphones in very late January or February, with last year's Galaxy S23 having arrived on February 1.

Officially, we know nothing about what's coming, except that there's going to be a lot of talk about AI (the event's tagline is "Galaxy AI is coming."

Samsung Galaxy S24

However, it's not that hard to guess that the star of the show will be Samsung's new smartphone flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S24.

(Side note: Can you believe we're already at number 24? Samsung launched the first S smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S, back in 2010, but it skipped some numbers, jumping from S10 to S20 in 2020.)

We're probably getting three new Galaxy S variants: The Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24+, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Rumors say the design won't change that much. The biggest change across the range might be a flatter display with slimmer bezels for the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

In terms of specs, once again, don't expect massive changes. We're talking slight improvements to the displays and cameras, though the new phones will very likely get the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. One particularly interesting rumor says that the entire Galaxy S24 line will start with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.

Finally, when it comes to pricing, we expect the prices to remain the same as last year.

Artificial intelligence

This year's event will be just as much about software as it is about hardware. More specifically, Samsung will make some artificial intelligence announcements, and will be positioning the new phones as "AI phones."

This will surely apply to camera tech, and Samsung has already teased that "zoom with Galaxy AI is coming."

But the company is likely to integrate its own upcoming generative AI model, the recently announced Gauss AI, into the phones. From what we can tell at this point, it will be similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and will consist of three parts: Gauss Language, Gauss Code and Gauss Image. Details are scarce at this point, but given the emphasis Samsung has put on the AI side of things, we expect these phones to be a good deal smarter than before.

Something other than phones?

Sometimes, Samsung uses the Galaxy S24 launch event to showcase new devices that aren't phones, such as laptops, fitness trackers, or tablets. This year, there's chatter about new Galaxy Book Pro laptops as well as a new Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker. As always, take all these predictions with a grain of salt until Samsung gives the official word.