STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Samsung says its Galaxy S5 phone will be released by April
- Vice president says it may have eye-scanning tech
- New Galaxy Gear smartwatch will come at same time, Lee says
- The Galaxy S5 will have a different design
(CNN) -- Samsung's Galaxy S5, the next generation of
its flagship smartphone, will be released by April and may include
innovative eye-scanning technology.
An executive for the Korean tech giant confirmed to Bloomberg
that the phone will hit stores this year on roughly the same time table
as previous iterations of the device, which has emerged as the chief
rival to Apple's iPhone.
The Galaxy S4 was announced last March and released in April.
Lee Young Hee, executive
vice president for Samsung's mobile business, also told the news service
that a new version of the company's Galaxy Gear smartwatch will be
released at the same time as the new phone.
The new phone is expected to look different from Samsung's popular Galaxy S4, shown here.
"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
said. "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."
Speaking at the
International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Lee wouldn't say
whether the eye scanner -- presumably an effort to one-up Apple's iPhone
5S with its fingerprint security feature -- is a sure thing.
"Many people are
fanatical about iris recognition technology," she said. "We are studying
the possibility but can't really say whether we will have it or not on
the S5."
She did say the S5 will
look and feel significantly different than its predecessor, which some
felt wasn't different enough from the Galaxy S3.
"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," she said. "For the S5, we will go
back to the basics. Mostly, it's about the display and the feel of the
cover."
In November, Samsung released the Galaxy Round,
with a curved, 5.7-inch screen. That release was only in South Korea,
and analysts have speculated the company isn't done with curved-screen
technology on its phones. At CES this week, Samsung rolled out a massive, 105-inch television with a curved screen.
Released in September, Galaxy Gear
helped push the growing wearable tech trend forward but, like some
other smartwatches, met with mixed reviews. Some felt the watch was too
bulky and had limited functionality.
