Catcher seems to be the most obvious choice. The Taiwanese company already ships medal bodies for the HTC One, the iPad mini and MacBook Air. It can churn out millions of cases a month and it is the go-to company for such products, reports Taipei Times.
Barclays analysts Dale Gai and Kirk Yang reckon Catcher will receive new smartphone orders from Samsung in the first half of 2014, which means its metal bodies could be used in the Galaxy S5, although we wouldn’t bet on it. The analysts said Samsung is close to making a final decision and that it will adopt metal casings in at least one if its phones next year, starting in Q2. They expect Samsung to order between 10 and 30 million cases.
So why aren’t we sure the S5 will show up in shining magnesium or aluminium armour? Well, 10 million just isn’t enough, and neither is 30 million. Besides, many people don’t mind Samsung’s plasticky removable back, as it allows easy access to the battery and microSD slot, plus it is cheap to replace.
Samsung could chose to go with an all-metal design for the 2014 Note phablet, but it could also come up with an entirely new model. It already has dozens of Galaxy phones in all shapes and sizes, so an entirely new premium model with an aluminium unibody doesn’t sound farfetched.
