Galaxy S10, 5G and foldable phones make news at CES 2019

Welcome back to the CINET live stage at CES2019 everyone. This is the part of the show where we talk about one of the most important pieces of tech anywhere in the world and that's phones. I'm Jessica Dalquot joined by Charlton Kim and Lin La. Now we had an entire show planned out which Samsung just cuddled by dropping a giant bomb and that is the launch Events, dates for its tenth anniversary Galaxy phone. It's probably gonna be the Galaxy S10. That'll take place Wednesday, February 20 in San Francisco. We're gonna be there. So [UNKNOWN] tell us a little bit about what we know about that phone. Why is it such an important moment for Samsung and why are they doing here at CES? Yeah I mean in terms of why announcing it here at CES. It's kind of a good time. Everyone's here. Everybody's paying attention to tech. Everything's happening. People are talking about phones. So for them it's really like hey don't forget about us we don't have a phone here. But we're gonna have something big really soon. This is their tenth anniversary phone. This year's just gonna be huge for them in terms of changes. We could see the in screen fingerprint reader. Some of these other Big new things. 5G. It's going to be just a massive phone, I think. And we may see more than just the Galaxy S10. Samsung has also teased a foldable device. Are we going to see it there? Yeah, I mean, we could. I think there's always kind of a debate. Do they have this there and overshadow the flagship phone? Because most people are gonna want to buy the S10. Most people aren't gonna buy this foldable phone. Do they want to give the S10 kind of all the glory at this event and all the attention? Or do they want to have the foldable there as well? I think the S10 is gonna have enough huge changes in it, that it is You know, it's a lot of news coming out just for that device, so we'll have to see what they'll end up doing. So, in-screen fingerprint radar, right? Yeah. There's rumors that at least one of the Galaxy S10 phones in the line up will have 5G. We're hearing that they'll be a light version, a plus size version that will be bigger. That will be a lot of phones if Samsung introduces affordable. Now I have a theory. I've take a look at the invitation, you've all seen the invitation. And it looks like there's a tie and that's kind of fallen over to the side. And then there's a line horizontally through the middle of the invitation And they are different colors schemes and I was looking at it. To me it clearly looks like two phone screens together because those edges are curved, but then I thought, alright, the color scheme on top is sort of blue and pink, could this be maybe like a- A very subtle reference to the foldable phone, as if saying like, the sky is the limit. We're just not gonna know until we get there, but I think it's a pretty exciting thing. Yeah. Lynn, you had recently looked at a foldable phone. You went hands on. Tell us about that experience, what do you think, what are the challenges there, did you like it?, is this you don't blow our minds and create all this different new use cases.>> Yeah i saw a feasible phone, it's called the flex spy, it was developed by these Chinese start up called royal but it also is based in the US. And it has a 7 point inch amylase screen and it folds. It's basically the idea that it's a tablet that if you want it to be a phone, you can fold it up and put it in your pocket. And you fold it like a book and the interface adjusts depending on how you see it, how you wanna view it, and how you orient the device. And it's available in China and the US right now. It starts at $1,300 so it's very expensive, But there are some challenges. Generally it's the wear and tear. Like everyday you fold it, open it up, and close it. Open it up and close it. Yeah, how many times are you going to do that every single day? Yeah I mean over a long course of it's period the phone has to last that kind of wear and tear and Royal said that the flex pi Can be folded over 200,000 times in its lifetime, even more than 200,000 times. But eventually there's going to be dead pixels right where it bends, and that's gonna be a challenge for other phone makers. And The biggest challenge I think is to get people to buy it. I know it looks cool. Does it look cool? [LAUGH] Does it? It's a really compelling shape, but are people gonna by it? It's kinda bulky. It's gonna a double its size in its profile. And it's like do people practically wanna buy it? Like is this practical? And we're looking a this video right now. Now this, The phone is bending but it's not laying flat, how do you carry that? This is really going to be thick, like are you going to put that in your pocket? You know people today already want thin devices so I think this is a challenge and this is a preview for what Samsung is going to have to look at.>> Yeah, Samsung, LG, Huawei they're all, well Samsung is not rumored it's actually, you know we all saw a peak of it, but LG and Huawei are also rumored to developed a flexible phone so I mean, it might be a trend, and we'll see if people are gonna actually buy these devices. Well, Shawn and I were in the room when Samsung showed off the sneak peak, out of the jacket, up into the air for just a few seconds really. That was back in November at the Samsung Developer Conference. That wasn't a prototype of what the device is actually gonna look like. So we don't know But it will be really interesting, I think. We know that there's going to be a plastic screen on the inside. When was the last time that we had plastic phones. Glass is really a premium material. Then when you think about an increased price on top of it, it just makes me wonder if people are actually gonna buy it. But as you say, Shara, if they tease that Is the tension really gonna be on this Galaxy S10? That's sort of their bread and butter device. It's going to be the standard. But we've seen some slowdown in the industry. Can you talk about what's going on with the smartphone recession? Yeah, what's basically happening is people in developed markets like the US, you have a phone. We aren't getting carrier subsidies anymore, so instead of holding onto this for two years, now it's about three years. So you don't need to upgrade that often. You get some nice new camera features in the phones, but there's nothing that's been so Earth shattering. People aren't buying phones. People just aren't buying phones. And then in China, the kind of worry is the economy's slowing down a bit, so people necessarily aren't buying phones as much there either. I mean, even Apple is [UNKNOWN]. Yeah, yeah, I mean, Apple's having problems, yeah. So it's just something that's happening across the industry. And so everybody is trying to look for something that really gets us excited again and really change these things and makes us go like, wow, that's so awesome. So I think we all agree that Samsung would be crazy not to at least tease the foldable phone at its Galaxy S ten launch event. But we're here at CES right now and there is a lot of talk about another aspect to the puzzle that's missing, and that's 5G. Tara, Lin, what have you been hearing about 5G here at [UNKNOWN]? Yeah, in terms of hardware, it's been pretty scant on physical phones, but a lot of it is just 5G announcements. A lot you know Qualcomm is here and they're touting how their chipsets are going to help with the 5G revolution. Carriers are going to announce to roll out a bunch of 5G networks in their coverage, but its important to know that owning a phone, a five G phone is the only way to access the network. So we're gonna be really interested in the next couple of years especially 2019 to see five G phones coming up. Now, there's been a little bit of controversy about five G here that also erupted sort of while we are here. Can you tell us about Yeah All the carriers want to be first with 5G. So we kind of saw AT&T touting kind of a more advanced 4G network as 5G. I believe they did that also when we went from 3G to 4G. I remember that, yeah. It's all something like tricky marketing. And for a lot of consumers you won't have a clue that it's not actually a real 5G. So we're gonna see what kind of happens with that. But real 5G is getting turned on this year, we're gonna see it. And in fact, Verizon did announce that its first 5G phone will be the Motorola Moto Z3, right now there's a mod for that. They didn't announce it, they announced it to Roger Cheng, and then he announced itl. [LAUGH] So we know that 5g is coming and we know that there's going to be a first mover advantage to the carriers that can get out first. Not just in the US but also globally. All right, so we did see a Few phones at the show and there were two that are worthy enough to talk about. Lynn, why don't you kick us off? Yeah, so like I said before, there wasn't a lot of phones here, but we did see some cool new phones. One was the red Magic Mars. It's Made by Nubia. And if you've never heard of Nubia, it's a subsidiary of ZTE, the Chinese phone maker. And it looks really cool, it has LED lights along the back of it, and it lights up and it has all these angular lines, and it looks just really, really aggressive. But what's interesting about it- That's what I want out of a phone. It's aggressive. I just want it to look like a racecar. And it has all these shoulder buttons, two shoulder buttons that you can map In-game controls of your choice. So it is catered towards gamers, it's similar to other gaming phones. The ASUS ROG phone and the Razer Phone 2 are other gaming phones that we've seen, that's released this past year. And all these phones have very powerful processors. The Red Magic Mars has this Qualcomm SnapDragon 845, bright sharp screens to view gameplay and lots of RAM and storage. And there's other, each one has unique features. The red magic mars in particular has this battery, it's battery has a liquid air cooling system that keeps everything a little bit less warm, cuz it's gonna overheat a lot from all those games, yeah. Right because liquid dissipates heat much better and proper. Yeah, so it has it's own system inside to keep it Less toasty, I guess. So that makes three gaming phones. Is that a trend? It's sort of a niche product to see what hits. The ruled media goes through trends so I will just say it is even though it's fine. And then, I saw what is probably the best out of the maybe five phone that were here. This is the Huawei Honor View 20. This phone was all ready announced in China, but for some reason the company is doing three launches. So there was the China launch, there was the announcement here, and there's going to be a big event in Paris on January 22nd. So I just I wanna show this off because it's got this beautiful finish. I mean, the phone specs are pretty good too, but it's the finish that's just absolutely hypnotizes and mesmerizes me. It's got this kind of chevron pattern that catches in the light and this color just leaps out at you. I don't know if Video can really do it justice. You'll see, you kind of have to hold it in your hand. Now Huawei's Honor brand is something that it's trying to spin off, and that's kind of an important distance for Huawei. That's a Chinese company right now that's having a lot of problems. Globally it's getting some hostility from governments, including from the US. So ���Huawei's having problems selling phones like this. We don't know that phone will come to the US. It might come to Amazon, and yet I see ���Huawei Innovating in ways that even Samsung has not. Sometimes that's just with the finish. Earlier this year we saw a phone, two [UNKNOWN] phones actually, that have triple cameras on the back. There's a race to triple cameras. So [UNKNOWN] has succeeded in knocking out Apple as the worlds number two largest smart phone so this is a real big competitor for Samsung Even though the phones won't probably sell in the US. So I think that looping back to the Galaxy S10, even though this phone is sort of more of a mid-range device, it's got that look, that aggressive, bold look. [LAUGH] And it's got that shelf appeal, and Samsung's gonna have to step it up with the Galaxy S10. We've seen some renders. We're waiting. Is this going to be a phone that is absolutely going to blow us away with an edge to edge display? This phone also has that pinhole camera at the front that we expect on the Galaxy S10. But which phone are you gonna rather have in your pockets? Something that looks black or something that looks like this? Well that means to me you're not just slapping a case on it the second you get it anyway. Yeah, that's definitely an issue, because, guess what? You have a phone, it's made of glass and it's going to break. And you will drop it eventually. So this is CES. We know that CES is not exactly a phone show, but there is a phone show that is coming up, and that is even beyond the Galaxy S10 launch. Basically, I would say that CNET has given us a few hints at the exciting changes that are coming to phones in 2019. And again we have that big Galaxy S10 launch to look forward to. That is just the tip of the iceberg though, because we also have mobile world congress which is completely dedicated to all thing mobile and that begins a few days after the Samsung launch. In fact we're gonna be leaving straight from the launch and pretty much flying to Barcelona where that show is. There are gonna be tones of phones and 5G announcements coming from there. But in the meantime stick around for more live coverage from CES 2019. [MUSIC]