Samsung Galaxy S5: What we know

Samsung has begun to release details of the Galaxy S5, the next generation of its flagship smartphone.

Read on to find out more about what's expected to be included in one of the biggest Android smartphone releases of the year, and when it will arrive.

Features and design

Samsung has acknowledged that its last refresh - the Samsung Galaxy S4 - wasn't different enough from its predecessor, something it plans to address with this year's release.

"When we moved to S4 from S3, it's partly true that consumers couldn't really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market reaction wasn’t as big," said Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung's mobile business in an interview with Bloomberg. "For the S5, we will go back to the basics. Mostly, it's about the display and the feel of the cover."

Samsung may also respond to the fingerprint reader Apple introduced with the iPhone 5s with its own biometric technology: iris scanning. The Galaxy S4 already includes eye-tracking to automatically scroll the screen as you read, and Samsung is looking into the possibility of extending that technology to user authentication.

"Many people are fanatical about iris recognition technology," Lee Young Hee said. "We are studying the possibility but can’t really say whether we will have it or not on the S5."

On a side note (literally), the next version of the outsized Galaxy Note is likely to include a three-sided display so that users can read messages running down the side of the handset. It's unlikely the Galaxy S5 will be thick enough to make this practical, however.

Specs

Specs-wise, it seems likely that Samsung will follow Apple's lead and include a 64-bit ARM-based processor inside the Galaxy S5, probably partnered with at least 4GB of RAM.

We think it's also highly probable that Samsung will follow the example of the HTC One and make 32GB the entry-level quantity of on-board storage - although with its support for microSD storage expansion, Samsung can afford to be more stingy with on-board storage than HTC can.

Accessories

Alongside its flagship phone, Samsung is planning to launch a revamped version of the Galaxy Gear smart watch.

"When we release our S5 device, you can also expect a Gear successor with more advanced functions, and the bulky design will also be improved," Samsung's Lee Young Hee said in the interview with Bloomberg.

Lee went on to say that healthcare features would become an important part of Samsung's future wearable devices.

Release date

Samsung released the S4 in March 2013, and the S3 in May 2012, and it plans to meet that spring-time cadence again this year. "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," Lee Young Hee said.

The Galaxy S5 could be timed to coincide with the release of Android 5, which is expected to arrive in the middle of this year - although Google may prefer to make a splash with one of its own Nexus handsets. Either way, you can expect the S5 to benefit from the upgrade, either at launch or soon after.

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk