Samsung Galaxy S4 Rumor Round-up
If you’re anything like us, you’re probably hankering for some hard details on Samsung’s next killer smartphone, the Galaxy S4. Well, tough nuggets, because there’s nothing official about the phone coming from South Korea. Instead, we have a number of rumors swirling around the device, some of which are likely to be true, and others that (sadly) are not.
It appears likely that we’re headed for an official March announcement; there’s possibly going to be a Samsung Unpacked event in Moscow, and sources have indicated an announcement coming on March 15th or 22nd. A release on either of those dates could bring about the device’s availability by the third week of April in Europe and the UK, and sometime in late spring or early summer in the U.S.
One of the most tantalizing (and therefore, least likely) rumors surrounds the S4’s display. There’s been some hubbub about flexible displays, but that’s probably not going to be happening this time around; what’s more likely is an “unbreakable” OLED screen made of plastic instead of glass. (Or even more likely, a Corning Gorilla Glass display.) It appears that the screen will be 5 inches of multitouch goodness, with a high pixel density (441 ppi) and a 1080x1920 resolution.
Agreement seems to be building that the processor inside this new phone will be an 8-core (zounds!) Exynos Octa 5 chip clocked at 1.8GHz, but some sources are predicting a quad-core Exynos 5450 processor instead.
There’s perhaps even more consensus that the rear camera on the S4 will be a swoon-worthy 13MP, with a front-facing 2MP camera to boot. It’s possible that the front camera could be equipped with technology that enables touchless gestures and eye-tracking capabilities for navigation, as well.
Another rumor indicates that Samsung may be blowing up what we’ve come to expect regarding storage on our phones by releasing the S4 in capacities of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB versions.
There’s one rumor that suggests that the Galaxy S4 will run the Tizen OS, but that’s fairly absurd. Not that there’s anything wrong with Tizen, but it’s a virtual certainty that Samsung will equip its hot new flagship smartphone with a hot new flagship OS. In this case, that could be Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)--or Android 5.0 (Key Lime Pie). In a double whammy of rumors, Google hasn’t confirmed when the next version of Android is coming, so we’re left to guess on that, too, but many suggest that it will be released at Google I/O in May. It’s therefore possible that the S4 will be running Android 5.0, but the two timelines don’t match up all that well; we imagine that it’s more likely that the S4 will ship with Jelly Bean, with the potential to upgrade to Key Lime Pie when it becomes available.
The worst part of ruminating on rumored products is that there are no pictures to be had. So for now, we’ll have to make do with images of the S3 and our imaginations.
It appears likely that we’re headed for an official March announcement; there’s possibly going to be a Samsung Unpacked event in Moscow, and sources have indicated an announcement coming on March 15th or 22nd. A release on either of those dates could bring about the device’s availability by the third week of April in Europe and the UK, and sometime in late spring or early summer in the U.S.
One of the most tantalizing (and therefore, least likely) rumors surrounds the S4’s display. There’s been some hubbub about flexible displays, but that’s probably not going to be happening this time around; what’s more likely is an “unbreakable” OLED screen made of plastic instead of glass. (Or even more likely, a Corning Gorilla Glass display.) It appears that the screen will be 5 inches of multitouch goodness, with a high pixel density (441 ppi) and a 1080x1920 resolution.
Agreement seems to be building that the processor inside this new phone will be an 8-core (zounds!) Exynos Octa 5 chip clocked at 1.8GHz, but some sources are predicting a quad-core Exynos 5450 processor instead.
There’s perhaps even more consensus that the rear camera on the S4 will be a swoon-worthy 13MP, with a front-facing 2MP camera to boot. It’s possible that the front camera could be equipped with technology that enables touchless gestures and eye-tracking capabilities for navigation, as well.
Another rumor indicates that Samsung may be blowing up what we’ve come to expect regarding storage on our phones by releasing the S4 in capacities of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB versions.
There’s one rumor that suggests that the Galaxy S4 will run the Tizen OS, but that’s fairly absurd. Not that there’s anything wrong with Tizen, but it’s a virtual certainty that Samsung will equip its hot new flagship smartphone with a hot new flagship OS. In this case, that could be Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)--or Android 5.0 (Key Lime Pie). In a double whammy of rumors, Google hasn’t confirmed when the next version of Android is coming, so we’re left to guess on that, too, but many suggest that it will be released at Google I/O in May. It’s therefore possible that the S4 will be running Android 5.0, but the two timelines don’t match up all that well; we imagine that it’s more likely that the S4 will ship with Jelly Bean, with the potential to upgrade to Key Lime Pie when it becomes available.
The worst part of ruminating on rumored products is that there are no pictures to be had. So for now, we’ll have to make do with images of the S3 and our imaginations.
