Upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4

Samsung Galaxy S4 – Features to Expect

• By Andrew Williams 
• 03 January 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4

               
It's the year of the Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s 2013. And just as in 2012, one of the biggest phones of the year is destined to be Samsung’s Galaxy flagship mobile – the Samsung Galaxy S4. But can the Samsung Galaxy S3 really be topped?

Samsung has not officially revealed any features of the upcoming phone, but we can already tell plenty about the phone from titbits leaked by insiders who claim to be in the know. 

Samsung Galaxy S4 Design

However, once of the elements we know the least about at present is exactly what the Samsung Galaxy S4 will look and feel like. As it’s not something that can be fully encapsulated in a series of specs, the designs of phones tend to be subject to far fewer leaks than their core specs.

Major deviations in the design strategy of the Galaxy series are unlikely, though. Since the first Samsung Galaxy flagship back in 2010, every top dog in the range has used a removable plastic battery cover. Although this choice is what has earned the phones much of the scant criticism they have received, it helps to keep the phones light, slim and less prone to shattering than a glass-rear phone. The Google Nexus 4, for example, uses a glass back.

The South Korean site Enuri suggests that the next Galaxy phone will be a bit chunkier than the Galaxy S3 at 9.1mm thick, and that it may offer the S-Pen seen in the Note 2.

The front of the Samsung Galaxy S4 won’t shy away from glass. It’s likely to use the latest generation of Corning’s toughened glass.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 uses Gorilla Glass II, however, the Galaxy S4 may feature Corning’s latest innovation – flexible toughened glass known as Willow Glass. However, The Verge writes that a flexible-screened Galaxy phone won’t arrive in 2013. And what’s the point of using a flexible screen coating when there’s no flexi tech in the actual screen? Unless Willow Glass is significantly thinner than Gorilla Glass II, there’s not much of a reason to.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Screen

Whether or not there’ll be any flexible element to the Samsung Galaxy S4’s display, the phone’s screen will be one of the device’s most-touted features.

Consistent with the trajectory of the series, the Samsung Galaxy S4’s screen will be larger and more pixel-packed than those of its predecessors.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 will feature a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display. It sounds impressive, but this calibre of screen is not without precedent. Several 1080p mobiles have already been unveiled – officially or otherwise – including the ZTE Nubia, Sony Yuga, HTC Butterfly and LG Optimus G2.

What will help to differentiate the Samsung Galaxy S4 from at least some of the competition is its AMOLED panel. This offers greater contrast than the rival IPS variants you’ll see in other top-end phones.

As we saw in our comparison of the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3, though, AMOLED isn’t always better. The colours of IPS type screens generally look more natural, and top brightness is often significantly higher.

Then there is the PenTile problem. PenTile refers to the sub-pixel arrangement of the screens of most AMOLED devices. It’s a Samsung-trademarked technology that splits the green subpixel into two bits. Samsung says it helps to prolong the life of the screen, but it also reduces clarity.

Samsung’s latest large-screen phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, featured a non-PenTile display, though, and we hope this new full-RGB screen type will be seen in the Samsung Galaxy S4 too.

What’s arguably more of a change is that the Galaxy S4 may offer an S-Pen stylus similar to that of the Note 2, according to SamMobile. This is a digitiser stylus that involved a whole new screen layer. The digitiser can sense the stylus’s tip well before it touches the screen, and can also judge varying levels of pressure. 
The original S-Pen

An S-Pen stylus would make the Samsung Galaxy S4 a nifty little sketching tool, but it would also blur the lines between a “Galaxy S” device and a “Galaxy Note” device. Let’s not forget, the original Note screen was only 0.3 inches larger than what we expect from the Galaxy S4.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Software and Release date

The next Samsung Galaxy flagship will use Android, but which version?

It all depends on when the Samsung Galaxy S4 lands. The phone will almost certainly offer the latest version of Android, unless Google tricks its half-rival by trotting out an update around the time of the phone’s launch.

Samsung cannot quickly adapt to new versions of the Android OS because it has to re-work its own TouchWiz UI first. Any change to the core software is likely to introduce instabilities and bugs in the Samsung UI.

The latest rumours from South Korea suggest that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be shown-off officially in April 2013. However, there’s not a great deal of weight to these reports – many outlets are out to garner attention, rather than spread the word of a reliable source.

However, an April unveil and a May release is in line with the 12-month cycle that has been followed in the series to date.

If you’re expecting to see the Samsung Galaxy S4 at this year’s key technology shows, CES 2013 in January and MWC 2013 in February, you can keep on dreaming. Samsung has set the precedent that the Galaxy-series phones are too big to share the stage with other releases.

Last year, Samsung hired out Earl’s Court for the official launch of the Samsung Galaxy S3 – it was no small affair.

Samsung Galaxy S4 CPU, RAM and Power

The Samsung Galaxy S4 may be the first phone in the series not too add additional cores to its processor spec. 2010’s Samsung Galaxy S had a single-core chip, the Galaxy S2 a dual-core model, last year’s Galaxy S3 a quad-core number, and this year’s Galaxy S4 is likely to stick to the same number.

There’s no reason for disappointment, though, as the Exynos 5450 chip that is rumoured to power the phone uses an improved processor architecture. ARM’s Cortex A15 CPU design offers 40 a per cent power increase over a Cortex A9 chip clocked at the same speed.

Few devices have used this processor architecture to date, but the Google Nexus 10demonstrated quite what it’s capable of, reaping excellent benchmark scores despite “only” using a dual-core CPU. The Samsung Galaxy S4’s Exynos 5450 will offer four cores, clocked at 2GHz.

In-line with the best currently available, we expect to see the Samsung Galaxy S4 use 2GB of RAM, like the Galaxy Note 2.

According to serial Samsung rumour producer SamsungHub, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will come with a 128GB internal storage option too. However, this is unlikely to prove popular in the UK unless Samsung makes the dangerous move of ripping out the microSD memory card slot that has featured in each Galaxy flagship to date.

The 64GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 was shelved in the UK due to the lack of demand, and the significant additional cost of a 128GB model of the next in-line would likely be met with the same indifference.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Camera

The megapixel war is back on. The Samsung Galaxy S4 may use a 13-megapixel camera sensor, almost doubling the figure of the 8-megapixel sensors seen in the Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5.

Sony is reportedly behind the sensor that will feature. The company’s 13-megapixel chips have been seen previously in the Sony Xperia T.

The user-facing camera is much less likely to get an upgrade, because it’s not really necessary. Samsung’s Galaxy S3 used a 1.9-megapixel sensor and it may well make a return this year in the Samsung Galaxy S4. No reliable rumours indicate that the phone will feature anything more advanced than an LED flash, either. Don’t expect to see a Xenon flash included. 

The Verdict

Most rumours indicate that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will follow the pattern that has emerged since the series's inception. Bigger screens, faster processors and geek-friendly features like expandable storage are the order of the day.

However, if we are to believe that Samsung plans to include digitser functionality in the next Galaxy, it marks a near-merging of the two popular lines. And while the growth in screen sizes is at least slowing, if you found the Samsung Galaxy S3 that bit too big, you won't be too happy with the next model's design.