Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8
Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 smartphones are displayed during the Samsung Unpacked event in New York City, United States March 29, 2017.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

With the highly-anticipated smartphones of 2017 are now reaching consumers worldwide, the focus has started to shift towards what 2018 has to offer. Since Samsung's Galaxy S9 will be one of the first flagship premium handsets to greet the world early next year, rumours and speculation around the device are currently flooding the Internet.

Although Samsung hasn't talked anything about the Galaxy S9's debut, a prevailing chitchat suggests that the company is likely to return to its conventional schedule to launch the Galaxy S9 and S9+ at next year's Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will take place between February 26 and March 1 in Barcelona.

Excluding this year's Galaxy S8 and S8+, Samsung has been holding its press conference on the Sunday ahead of MWC. For example, the launch events of both the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S7 took place ahead of MWC in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

If the company indeed sticks to its default schedule, the world will have the first official glimpse of the Galaxy S9 on February 25.

Samsung Galaxy S8
Galaxy S8's rear fingerprint reader.Creative Commons

This will definitely be an earlier launch when compared to this year's launch of the Galaxy S8 series. But it should be noted that the Galaxy S8 was launched in March and released in April as Samsung was recovering from the unforeseen Galaxy Note 7 crisis.

A recent report also said that Samsung had finalised the specs of the Galaxy S9 and S9+, and the mass production of the duo was scheduled to begin in December. If true, it's quite safe to assume that the Galaxy S9 will hit stores sometime around MWC 2018.

According to rumours, the Galaxy S9 will retain the rear fingerprint sensor while sporting the same 5.8-inch Infinity Display as the Galaxy S8. As the phone is also rumoured to copy some of the iPhone X "tricks", it won't be a surprise if we end up seeing a new face recognition technology in the Galaxy S9 to rival Apple's face ID.