Besides its large size, the S-Pen has been another major reason why the Galaxy Note has been this popular. It’s by far the best stylus-like accessory on the market for touchscreen devices because it uses an active digitizer so it’s a lot more accurate than a regular capacitive stylus, and it’s also pressure sensitive. These things matter a lot for people who actually intend to use them for drawing or for math-related work.
To stand out from the competition even more, it seems like Samsung is planning to add the S-pen to its Galaxy S4 flagship, too, according to a new rumor from South Korea. Considering the phone is rumored to have a large 5″ screen with a 1080p resolution, the S-Pen rumor does seem very likely to become real.
Latest rumors also point to the Galaxy S4 arriving with a quad core Cortex A15-based Exynos 5440 chip, that should also have some Cortex A7 cores for higher efficiency. It’s quite possible it will be that big.Little 4.4 chip we’ve heard about earlier, although it’s not guaranteed considering Samsung hasn’t even officially announced it yet, and Galaxy S4 is due in April. It usually takes at least 6 months or so from announcing to shipping it. But maybe they are just keeping it as secret as they can until close to the Galaxy S4’s launch.
Other rumors include a 13 MP camera, which is something we should see in all smartphone flagships next year. I just hope that their focus was on making high quality pictures and actually innovating around the camera, rather than just increasing the MP number to use it as a marketing bullet point.
I know Samsung will try to make a very good camera, that is at least competitive with the latest or even the next iPhone, but my point is that they should strive to be a whole class above the others in making quality pictures, and not just compete at the same pace with everyone else. And I think that would be a lot easier if they weren’t that focused on increasing megapixels, which also has the drawback of making devices thicker.
Speaking of thickness, it looks like it wil be 9.2mm thick, and not just because of having more megapixels, but because of the S-Pen, too. I don’t mind the thickness as much, as long as they also took advantage of it and introduced a larger battery in there. Seeing how they put a 3,300 mah battery in the Note 2, I wouldn’t be surprised if they put a 3,000 mAh battery in Galaxy S4, too.
[Via PhoneArena]