Samsung hopes to steal the show on Monday with the launch of its newest flagship smartphone at Mobile World Congress on Feb. 24. The company plans an event called “Unpacked 5” for 8 p.m., at which it is expected to launch the Galaxy S5.
The Galaxy S phones are the only LTE devices that approach the iPhone in global sales. Although Samsung does not disclose sales figures, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg believe the company sold 65.6 million units of the S3 and 63.5 million units of the S4. In comparison, Apple had sold an estimated 89 million units of the iPhone 5 when the 5S and the 5C launched this fall.
Samsung clearly has Apple in its sights, and preliminary reports on the specifics of the S5 suggest that the world’s leading smartphone maker has followed Apple’s lead in developing a fingerprint sensor for its new flagship device. According to Sam Mobile, the S5 will be able to recognize up to eight different fingerprints, and the user will be able to assign each one a different function. Different fingerprints will be able to open different apps or provide access to websites that would otherwise be password protected.
To use the fingerprint sensor, the user will reportedly need to swipe the entire finger slowly across the home key, so it may be a little more difficult to use than the sensor on the iPhone 5S. Apple invested in fingerprint sensor technology that the company clearly believed to best-in-breed, acquired AuthenTec for $356 million in 2012. Last year, reports circulated that Samsung was buying a fingerprint technology firm but Samsung denied those reports.
