Well it didn’t take long for a close review of the Samsung Galaxy S IV to appear on the Internet. In fact it took less than a day before the official launch for this to happen. The website mobile.it168.com presents the upcoming handset from Samsung in more detail than ever. It looks as though Samsung couldn’t keep Galaxy S IV behind closed doors. In fact, it’s such a detailed review that even some phones that are currently on the market haven’t had that close a look. But enough of my ranting, let’s round-up the features.
Firstly, it is expected that the soon to be released S IV will have a dual-sim brother.
This exact version of the phone was the one that got hands-on (you can see in the top-right of the screen the two sim card signs). They mentioned the phone was a prototype, but they said that the phone will have the same specs and design, but the software is not in the final release version. How much money do this websites pay Samsung employees for this leaks and for sneaking phones out, I have no clue.
It’s all about the hardware, at the bottom line (one of the reasons being it runs Android and if you don’t like something, you can change just about anything you like about it with custom ROMs and the likes). The leaked phone had Samsung’s own Exynox 5 Octa processor with a total of 8 cores. There are 2 CPU’s each with 4 cores:
- 4 cores with greater battery efficiency clocked at 1.2 GHz (with a A7-based architecture),
- 4 made for on-demand processing muscle clocked at 1.8GHz (CPU which has a A15-based architecture)
That sounds good on paper, but if it was to be quantified, how would the Exynos 5 Octa stack with other processors. Take a gander below.
HTC One seems to be neck and neck with the S4, even though it has a quad-core 1.7 GHz processor, but keep in mind that this is not the release version of the OS so there could very well be more improvements in the final build.
The 4.99-inch Super AMOLED HD 1080p screen (hey, at least it’s not a 5-incher, because then that would be too big) will have yet another pixel arrangement scheme, one which can be seen in comparison with Samsung’s other top of the line phones.
The interesting part of the new screen technology are the PHOLED phosphorescent green pixels (which compose the greater part of the screen as seen above) which are said to cut down on battery consumption of about 25% compared to other AMOLED displays.
And speaking of batteries, the S4 will come with a 2,600 mAh battery, which along with the 2 CPU architecture should definitely extend the battery-life of the phone.
Camera-wise, it’s definitely an enhancement over the S3. In some pictures I even think it outclassed the iPhone 5 camera. Here, look for yourself.
I will not cover the software part of the phone, since it was a pre-release version, but I will add that the phone had Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean installed and they also said that this will be the version which it will be launched with.
As far as looks go, it clearly following the design of the S3, thinning the display bezel some more to fit the bigger display. The phone is also thinner than the S III (which is 8.6 mm) coming in at only 7.7 mm.
The pricing for the phone was also leaked along with the headset, which will be expected to be around roughly $725 (or €558).
The phone looks like a winner and as far as I can see, the only disappointment that comes to mind is the fact that they still sticked with the physical buttons.