Ultimate #10YearChallenge: Samsung Galaxy S series from S to S10

The first ever Galaxy S smartphone was released in 2010. It was nothing like today’s large, smaller bezel screen but a smartphone with a small form factor and big bezels. It ran on Android 2.1 and had an 800 x 480 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display. The phone had a single-core 1 GHz processor with just 512MB RAM. Talking about the camera, the front facing camera was 0.3 MP while the rear camera was 5 MP.

Galaxy S2

The second generation of the S series lineup was refreshed in April 2011. It had the same screen as its predecessor but got a processor bump to dual-core 1.2 GHz. The rear camera saw an upgrade to 8 MP while the front camera was a 2 MP camera. The RAM was upgraded slightly to 1GB

Galaxy S3

The third generation smartphone saw a significant upgrade in terms of design and performance. It was the first phone in the Galaxy S lineup to get an HD display. The smartphone ran on Android 4.0 that featured a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM. 

Galaxy S4

The fourth Generation Galaxy S was launched with a 5-inch Full HD display with a bump in the processor. It had a 1.9 GHz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM. The rear camera was upgraded to 13 MP.

Galaxy S5

Launched in April 2015, the S5 featured a slightly bigger screen with a 5.1-inch display that was brighter than the previous generation. The processor too was bumped up to 2.5 GHz quad-core processor with 2GB RAM while the rear camera resolution increased to 16MP.

Galaxy S6

The first Galaxy S device to offer two variants was the Galaxy S6 which had a regular version and an edge variant. The standard Galaxy S6 featured a 2560 x 1440 Quad HD Super AMOLED display, measuring 5.1-inches. It was powered by an Octa-core processor where four cores clocked 2.1 GHz while the rest clocked 1.5 GHz. This phone had a 3GB RAM. While the rear camera remained the same as S5, the front camera was upgraded to 5MP.

The edge variant of the S6 had the same internals but where it differed was the sides of the display that were curved and used to wrap around the phone to give the illusion of no bezel.

Galaxy S7

The standard variant of the S7 was an incremental upgrade to the Galaxy S6. It was launched with two options like its predecessor and saw some changes in the camera and software. The camera got a dual-pixel setup which improved the picture clarity under low-light conditions. It was the first phone to get Samsung’s own payment system, Samsung Pay.

The screen on the Galaxy S7 edge was increased to 5.5 inches and had the same dual edge Full HD AMOLED display.

Galaxy S8

The first Samsung smartphone to have an Infinity Display, meaning edge-to-edge display with no bezels. It did have tiny bezels on the top and the chin of the phone. The two variants of the phone were different only in terms of screen size and battery. The smaller S8 was a 5.8-inch display and a 3,000 mAh battery while the larger S8+ had a 6.2-inch display and a 3,500 mAh battery. The phone had 4GB RAM and Snapdragon 835 processor and Samsung’s Exynos 8895.

Galaxy S9

The latest offering from Samsung for its Galaxy S lineup looks the same as its predecessor. However, there were a few changes here and there.

The biggest change was in the camera where the S9+ got a dual camera with a dual aperture setup. It was the only smartphone to offer two different apertures at f/1.5 and f/2.4 making it one of the best cameras for low-light conditions.

Samsung Galaxy S10

Samsung hasn’t revealed any details about the upcoming smartphone. However, if we believe the leaks, the S10 will have three variants with a punch-hole display, an in-display fingerprint sensor, three different cameras. A fourth version will be 5G ready with the same spec sheet. However, the screen size of the 5G variant isn’t known as of now. Samsung will launch the 10th edition Galaxy S phone on February 20.