Samsung Galaxy S20 event: what to expect from the February 11th event

Samsung’s next Unpacked event is scheduled for February 11th at 2PM ET / 11AM PT, and in typical Samsung fashion, we already have a pretty good idea of what it’s preparing to announce. At the top of the billing is almost certainly its flagship Samsung Galaxy S20 series of smartphones, but there’s also the foldable Galaxy Z Flip and a new pair of true wireless earbuds.

Beyond the announcements we’re sure we’ll see, there’s still a chance that Samsung might have something to surprise us with at the show. Persistent rumors over the past couple of weeks have claimed that we could see the company announce a release date for one of its long-delayed Bixby-powered smart speakers, and there’s always a chance that Samsung might have another surprise announcement up its sleeve, even if the lack of leaks make that seem pretty unlikely.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S20 SERIES

All of the rumors this year suggest that there will be three main versions of Samsung’s flagship handset, down from the four we saw last year. There’s the regular Galaxy S20, the larger S20 Plus, and the premium S20 Ultra, which appears to be replacing the S10 5G from 2019. And yes, this means that Samsung is almost certainly going to skip the S11 through S19 and jump straight from S10 to S20. Poor Galaxy S11. We hardly knew ye.

Conspicuously missing from the rumor mill this year is any mention of a budget S20 device to replace the Galaxy S10E. Potentially, that’s because Samsung announced two affordable handsets, the S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite, at the beginning of the year. Given that none of this is official information, though, it’s impossible to know for sure.

My colleague Chaim Gartenberg recently put together a big piece collecting the various rumors about the S20 lineup here, but broadly speaking, there are three main things to expect from the S20 and S20 Plus.