Samsung Galaxy S4: What, When and Why?

and Why?

Even as the Galaxy S3 solidifies its market leading position, rumours are swirling about Samsung announcing an S4 early in 2013. AMELIA HUNTER tells us what to expect.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 was released this May, and it’s already one of the most popular smartphones on the market in 5 months it sold more than 30 million units.

According to Strategy Analytics, it’s the world’s best-selling device at the moment. The Galaxy S3 hasn’t run its course yet, and it’s expected to sell well in the coming months, too, yet Samsung is already working on its successor, the Galaxy S4.

Rumour has it that the Galaxy S4 will be shown at either Consumer Electronic Show 2013 in Las Vegas in January or Mobile World Congress 2013 in February in Barcelona. It is expected to come with a lot of interesting improvements, though none of them yet officially announced.

What features should we expect to see in the new Samsung Galaxy S4?

Design and display

Many people thought the Samsung Galaxy S2 looked a lot like Apple’s iPhones, but the Galaxy S3 is different and quite recognisable. However, some geeks say it looks like a bit of a toy with that plastic case, and they would like to see the next Galaxy phone made from metal and glass. At the moment we have no idea what the Galaxy S4 will really look like and what materials it will be made of, but we don’t think using glass would be a smart choice. Remember how fragile the glass iPhone 4S was? Metal, on the other hand, could really make the device look more premium and stylish, but it’d make it heavier, too.

Perhaps the only thing we know almost for sure about the upcoming Galaxy S4 is its screen size . After the unexpected success of the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2, Samsung has apparently decided to arm the Galaxy S4 with a full 1080p HD 5-inch display with 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution and 441ppi pixel density, which is about 110ppi more than the retina display of the iPhone 5. However, some rumours say that Samsung is now experiencing problems with making such a screen and, if they don’t find a solution in the nearest future, they won’t manage to finish their next flagship and show it at the big events.

Another rumour says the Galaxy S4 will have a flexible display, but Samsung is expected to start producing such screens in 2013 only, so even if they make a flexible phone, it’ll most likely be the Galaxy S5, but not the S4. That’s a shame a flexible device in early 2013 would help Samsung finally beat Apple convincingly.

Performance

The latest rumours say the Samsung Galaxy S4 will feature a quad-core processor based on ARM’s A15 architecture and at least 2GB of RAM, so fast performance is guaranteed. On the other hand, there’s nothing extraordinary in quad-core processors nowadays many other devices have them. So if Samsung wants to stand out, it’ll have to think of something else, something more powerful. Perhaps arming the new Galaxy S4 with a processor with eight cores would be a cool idea at least that’s what we’re expecting from them, especially if we take into account that ZTE has already announced an eight-core device called the Apache.

Battery

If the Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with a 5-inch screen and an eight-core processor, it’ll need a very powerful battery, too the 1,650mAh of the old Galaxy S2 and the 2,100mAh of the Galaxy S3 won’t do the job.

Motorola has already created the RAZR MAXX with a 3,300mAh battery, and we think Samsung also needs something like that to ensure relatively long battery life. Besides, it would be nice if they could get rid of the traditional wires and invent a more innovative way of charging.

Other features

So what else would we like to see in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4?

First of all, Samsung can improve its speakers making them stronger and more powerful: the ringtones have rather poor sound on Samsung’s previous phones, so good speakers can become a good selling point, too. We’d also like Samsung to create good-quality headphones for the Galaxy S4 and include them in the box. Unfortunately, we don’t think Samsung will do this.

The other feature we’d like to see improved is the S-Voice. Yes, it’s better overall than Apple’s Siri, but there’s still much space for improvement. Right now the S-Voice can tell you about the weather, set an alarm and do other simple things, but it would be better if it could become more useful, able to do something you can’t do yourself.

So…

If everything goes well, we can expect to see the Samsung Galaxy S4 with a 5-inch screen with revolutionary 441ppi pixel density, powerful 8-core processor, big battery, better speakers and improved S-Voice. All these features would make it the best smartphone on the market. If Samsung solves the display problems mentioned above soon enough, the new Galaxy phone will most likely be officially introduced in the first months of 2013 and released in May or June 2013.

* Amelia Hunter is founder and editor ofhttp://www.teqno-logical.com. Follow her on Twitter on@HunterAmelia