The newly-launched Samsung Galaxy J sets an important precedent for the company, hinting at a future Galaxy S5 flagship with a metal design.

Samsung is well-known for its Galaxy line of smartphones, but even with high-end specifications, the flagships still received plenty of criticism over their build material. The company always chose plastic to obtain higher production yield rates and keep the costs down, but many consumers wanted a more premium build material.

Apple received high praise for its choice of metal in its devices, as did HTC with its latest HTC One flagship. Samsung was expected to introduce its Galaxy S4 with a metal design, but the smartphone still kept the plastic tradition. With the new Galaxy J, however, things seem ready to change.

The Samsung Galaxy J just launched in Japan and will hit Taiwan soon as well. Samsung didn't mention yet whether it will release the smartphone in additional markets, but the metal design it used for the Galaxy J gives hope of a future Galaxy S5 flagship with a premium metal build material.

The new Galaxy J seems to be a top-notch combination between the company's current flagships, the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3. From the Galaxy S4, the Galaxy J borrowed the 5-inch full HD 1080p Super AMOLED display. Specs shared with the Galaxy Note 3, meanwhile, include the high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz, 3GB of RAM, and 13-megapixel camera.

Other specs and features of the Galaxy J include 32GB of internal storage capacity, a microSD card slot for up to 64GB of additional memory, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS, and IR blaster. The smartphone runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean with Samsung's own TouchWiz on top.

While the new Samsung Galaxy J may never make it to the U.S., it sets a very important precedent and shows that the company is finally willing to ditch plastic in favor of a premium metal build for its high-end smartphones. It's no guarantee that the next-generation Samsung Galaxy S5 flagship will boast a metal design, but it's definitely a big step in the right direction.