Six things we want to see in Samsung’s Galaxy S IV Samsung is expected to unveil a new flagship next week; here's our wish list.

The Galaxy S III's days as Samsung's flagship are drawing to a close. The Ars editors tell all about what they want in its successor.

We're less than a week away from Samsung's Unpacked event on March 14, at which the company is widely expected to reveal the successor to its popular Galaxy S III smartphone. Ars will be on the scene with a liveblog and our other, usual event coverage. But in the days leading up to the reveal, we wanted to take some time to discuss what we expect (and what we hope) Samsung will reveal when it takes the wraps off its next handset.

What follows is the Ars staff's wish list for Samsung's next phone. You don't have to agree with what we want (and let us know if you don't, because we'll be doing a follow-up with your most requested features next week), but if Samsung hits all of these marks with its next Galaxy we think the company will have another hit on its hands.

1) Android 4.2

Months after release, Google's Nexus phones remain the only ones on the market with Android 4.2.

There were a bunch of Android phones at Mobile World Congress this year, but the only one that even said it would come with Android 4.2—the Asus PadFone—was actually running Android 4.1.

Granted, Android 4.2 was a bigger update for tablets than it was for phones (especially once you discount things like stock keyboard and notification center enhancements that Samsung is likely to chuck in favor of its TouchWiz UI anyway). However, Samsung is the biggest Android device manufacturer on the planet. It's so big that Google is kind of afraid of its impact on the ecosystem. It would be nice to see the company commit to setting a good example by pushing for more-prompt software updates.

There are some indications that we're going to get our wish here—leaked screenshots of an Android 4.2 update for the Galaxy S III suggest that Samsung is actively working on an update. And since 4.2 includes some of the S IV's rumored features, this suggests that the update will land on the newer phone first. Our fingers are crossed.

2) A non-AMOLED display (or maybe not?)

The debate over the virtues and drawbacks of AMOLED and PenTile screens continues to be divisive. Even Ars staffers can't agree on whether Samsung should ditch the display technology in its new phone or double down on it. The short version is that AMOLED screens can suffer from over-saturated colors and slightly fuzzy text, but that they can make up for this by being a bit cheaper to produce, consuming less battery power, and having better contrast (with deep blacks being particularly noteworthy). What side of the debate you come down on depends largely on what you value in a screen.

Ars Associate Writer Casey Johnston, on one hand, calls PenTile "abhorrent." "Competitors are shipping non-PenTile 1080p screens now," she continued, in reference to phones like LG's Optimus G Pro and the HTC One and Droid DNA. "I know Samsung favors AMOLED, but, come on, stop."

Microsoft Editor Peter Bright came out swinging in favor of Samsung's screen technology, though. "I don’t give a damn about PenTile whiners. I want the deep blacks, the bright colors, and the high contrast," he said. "If they can get RGB (i.e., non-PenTile) AMOLED, so much the better, if only because it makes the whiners shut up. But even PenTile is fine, because I don’t look at my screen with a magnifying glass all day."

You can't please everyone, and whatever Samsung does here it looks like someone is going to be unhappy. In either case, there's some precedent for both choices—Samsung's phones have tended to stick to AMOLED displays, but tablets like the Galaxy Note 10.1 and the Note 8.0 have used more traditional RGB displays.

3) Keep the size manageable

The trend with high-end, flagship phones in the Android ecosystem has been to make them bigger and bigger as time has gone on. But we think the Galaxy S III is already a good size—it's got a 4.8" screen, so it's definitely no slouch. It also feels pretty comfortable to hold.

"I love the current form factor of the GS3 and I don’t know that I want it to get any bigger because it’s the perfect size for my hands right now," said Reviews Editor Florence Ion.

Casey Johnston agrees: "Make the screen as big as you can by spreading it to the edges of the phone, but for God's sake, stop making the body bigger."

Samsung already has a high-end, large-screened phone on the market in the form of the Galaxy Note II, which among other niceties includes a 5.55" touchscreen, a digitizer, and a stylus. We're hoping that Samsung continues to use the Note line for those who truly want huge screens, and that the S phones stick to something a little more comfortable for one hand.

4) Adhere to button standards

Samsung's button layout: merely non-standard, or an "abomination"?

Since Ice Cream Sandwich or so, "stock" Android has used three software buttons for phone navigation: a Back button on the left, a Home button in the center, and an application switcher button on the right. Samsung has bucked that trend on all of its recent phones and tablets, using a combination of hardware and capacitive buttons.

Florence Ion likes the style of the buttons, and the fact that they don't take up screen space as software buttons do. "I hope they keep the little 'home' button," she said. "Please, oh please."

However, Peter Bright takes issue with their arrangement. "Standard Android buttons. That’s what I want. It’s what I crave," he said. "I wanted to literally throw the Galaxy S III at the wall because of its use of legacy buttons. Putting the back button on the right is an abomination, and forcing me to have a menu key (often useless) when I could have a multitasking key instead is just plain mean. The new (I say 'new,' I think it’s about two years old now) button layout is much more useful and usable."

5) Think of the battery life!

Some of us are just a little weary of the constant specifications race that continues to play out among the Android handset manufacturers. Ever-larger, ever-denser screens, ever-faster processors, and ever-thinner phones are the most visible results of this competition. The spec that usually gets sacrificed to achieve them: battery life.

"[The Galaxy S IV] doesn't need to be any thinner," says Casey Johnston. "Stop playing the thin game, start playing the bigger-battery-which-enables-better-everything else game."

Samsung may not feel as pressured as some of the smaller handset manufacturers to get caught up in a specification race—the company's marketshare and profits are way up, as is the Galaxy brand's visibility. Samsung has some breathing room to make a balanced phone that doesn't necessarily blow its competitors' specifications out of the water. Apple has taken a similar approach to its iPhone hardware—fast within reason, but not at the expense of battery life—and that's the path we'd prefer Samsung to take as well.

6) A camera we can love

Finally, we want Samsung's next smartphone to step up its camera game. Phones from other ecosystems—the iPhone and Lumia 920 among them—have made the camera a signature feature. It's time for Samsung to put that same level of emphasis on both the camera hardware itself and the image processing happening in the software.

"I also really hope that the GS4 has a better camera," said Florence Ion. "Samsung needs to strike a deal with some lens manufacturers or something because I’m not happy with the way that photos come out on this phone. Before I had an iPhone, the Android camera situation didn’t bother me too much, but after I had a taste of that—and I started borrowing my boyfriend’s Lumia 920 to take photos of friends in low-light places—I’ve realized how ridiculous it is that my own phone isn’t capable of that. Samsung makes point and shoots—is there a way they could implement that technology and do some tweaks to Android to make photos come out better? The Android camera situation is just a dismal one anyway, but if this is the world’s best-selling Android manufacturer, it needs to step it up."

What about you?

Again, these are just our opinions. We think most of them are pretty reasonable—we like the Galaxy S III, but we'd like it more if all of the above were included in its successor. Sound off and let us know what you'd like to see in Samsung's new flagship, and we'll publish a follow-up before the event next week to showcase your ideas.