like the G4. It’s a great phone with a fantastic display quite possibly the best camera on the market. But it’s hardly revolutionary. For a phone that launched after the Galaxy S6, the feature list just doesn’t look as quite as cutting-edge. There’s no fingerprint sensor, no wireless charging, we just aren’t wowed by an ever-so-slightly curved display anymore.

This year, is bumping up the release of the G5, going head-to-head with Samsung by revealing its new flagship phone on the same day—February 21, just at the start of Mobile rld Congress. ’ll be there to cover the reveal, but the rumor mill is already buzzing with details about ’s upcoming premium phone.

Snapdragon 820

ile the fastest phones of last year came equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 ( perhaps suffered for it), Samsung used its own Exynos processor, the G4 relied on the Snapdragon 808. This probably makes no tangible difference in real-world performance, it made it hard to appear at the top of those benchmark charts everyone loves.

Supposedly, the G5 will use the Snapdragon 820. Built on a 14nm process using four custom Kryo C cores, together with a new G new image processor, this should make for a big bump in performance over last year’s model.

An always-on display

’s V10 phone added a secondary “ticker” display to show phone status notification info. That’s nice, but it’s a costly bit of extra hardware that isn’t likely to get much software support due to its proprietary nature.

Recently, posted the following GIF about the G5 to its Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Mobile/

at does it mean? If I had to guess, I would say the “ticker display” is gone will instead use a portion of the main display, leaving it lit up with the time notification icons.

This could signal a change in the display technology is using. ile the G4 used an I D, such a display would drain a lot of battery by leaving the backlight on for an always-on display. An OD, on the other h, only uses power for the pixels that are lit. And has been pushing OD hard in its TV business. Is this going to be ’s first premium phone with one of its own OD displays? I bet it will be.

The rumor mill also says the display size will shrink a little, from 5.5 inches to 5.3 inches, but the resolution will remain 2560 x 1440 (quad HD). 

Removable battery SD card

ile the G4 featured a slightly curved display removable back similar to the G3 before it (with an additional leather option), the G5 will supposedly opt for a flat metal unibody design.

Still, ’s fans dem a removable battery, so the company wants to give it to them. If an eyewitness report given to CNET Korea is any indication, will have its cake eat it too: a metal unibody design, with a removable bottom “chin” that lets you slide out the battery.

CNET Korea

ly, a removable battery isn’t nearly as important as the ability to add more storage (using a B battery pack to charge up is just as easy, more flexible, than lugging around a device-specific spare battery). Fortunately, word is that plans to keep the microSD expansion card slot, just as it has on the G4.

On the back: Fingerprint sensor dual cameras

A Reddit user, on an account that has since been deleted, posted a bunch of supposedly leaked details about the G5, including this image of the back of the phone (likely a test unit in a case to conceal the design):

Reddit

Okay, sketchy Reddit posts are one thing, but since that post was made, dozens of third-party cases for the G5 have sprung up on Amazon, such as this one from Spigen.

Spigen / Amazon

ile these are almost certainly renders not photos, the case makers need to know what size shape cutouts are necessary on the back of the device. 

So what exactly are we seeing here? The big circle is a fingerprint sensor just as you see on the Nexus 6/a> 5X. So that’s one defect of the G4 taken care of. so note that the volume buttons have moved to the side, instead of above below the fingerprint sensor on the back. I could never get used to the volume buttons on the back.

But what about that crazy camera? 

The G4 nailed it with its fantastic camera, could be taking it a step further by employing two cameras on the back of the phone. In the center of the camera module is the dual-D flash, laser autofocus, heart rate sensor. To the left right are 8M 16Mcamera modules.

don’t know yet the details of these two cameras or how will employ them. Maybe one is an infrared depth sensor? Maybe the 8Msensor has no color filter is only meant to capture light intensity information, to be combined with the 16Mcamera’s color info? Maybe they have different apertures focal lengths, will blend the data from the two of them together to produce images with a lot of bokeh? Is one of them a wide-angle lens the other isn’t?

This is an exciting area of computer image processing research: Combining the information from two different image sensors into a single image that is far greater than the sum of its parts. I’ll be very disappointed if merely lets you choose between using one camera or the other.

Quick Cover

‘s seems so excited about its new phone that it just can’t help but announce its official case ahead of time. 

The semi-transparent mesh cover sort of reminds me of the Dot View covers for the HTC One M9, only with smaller dots a window cut out for the always-on display. It is said to work similarly, allowing users to swipe tap to silence alarms or answer calls without opening the front flap of the case.

“Magic Slot?”

rhaps the most interesting rumor, the one with the least concrete evidence, is that the G5 will feature a hardware expansion slot that will br “Magic Slot.” The idea is to provide a custom interface for hardware accessories. Think: A VR headset like Gear VR, a headphone amplifier, a high-quality microphone for podcasting, or a special camera attachment.

I have no idea where this slot is supposed to be located, what sort of interface it uses, or whether it’s going to be a proprietary thing or open to third party hardware. If wants to assure that it’s worth buying “Magic Slot” accessories, they’ll have to promise that they’ll be supported on future smartphones for years to come. It seems like most of this could be accomplished with a B port, frankly. For these reasons, I’m not really sure this is a real thing, rather than just some confusion among rumor spreaders about the removable battery compartment.

If it’s true, it certainly would be the sort of unique, differentiating feature that could help the phone st out. ‘ll find out more on February 21 when announces the phone in Barcelona.