Samsung Galaxy S4 – Launch Rumours

As we start to draw the curtains on 2012, it has been a key year for Samsung, with their mobile phones, the Note 2 and S3, taking centre stage both in terms of market share and also in the courts as it lost a significant battle of IP rights with Apple. However, that did little to suppress Samsung’s popularity and in fact cemented Samsung as the key competitor to Apple’s mobile products.

Samsung’s Galaxy S3 took the Android world by storm this year. The device, which was announced and released back in May, went on to smash all Android devices sales records, with over 30 million units sold. And for good reason. The Galaxy S3 and its successor the S3 LTE, are arguably the best Android smartphone on the market and it’s certainly one of the best Android smartphones of all time.

We are soon to the one year mark and rumours have started circulating on the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Hardware Specifications

The design of the Galaxy S4 is currently unknown. We could see several leaks as the dates get closer but as of now, nothing is released as of yet. Tentatively, initial rumours are that the S4 would be equipped with a 5 inch 1080p screen, something similar to that of the ZTE mega phone.

The above picture is a concept art, that takes design cues for the current iPhone 5 and merge it with the Samsung Galaxy S3. Form factor does look somewhat off though, with a 16:10 form factor instead of the current 16:9 ratio.

A rumoured leaked photo have also appeared on the internet, with the Samsung Galaxy S4 looking like the mock up above and does fit with the overall design scheme of the Galaxy S-series. Instead of the single hardware HOME button, it seems like it would be replaced with a full set of capacitive buttons instead. With the Galaxy S3 fast penetrating the mass consumer market, what is important here is the user friendliness and the multimedia features of the phone, so display, sound, and camera play an important role. The S3 software suite showed Samsung emphasis on the camera features and will likely continue for the S4 with the innovative feature set. We are also anticipating a megapixel bump to probably 13 megapixel for the S4 and hopefully a better sensor and lens to improve areas like low – light shooting.

Processor and RAM wise would likely be the fastest quad-core chip available on the market and at least 2gb of RAM. Rumours suggest that it could be Samsung’s Exynos 5440 processor. It is going to be fast, but not something that would be visibily present, nothing too spectacular.

Release Date in Singapore

Last year, the Galaxy S3 was announced at a separate event in the United Kingdom during the month of May. This was shortly followed by sales around the end of May with Singapore being the first batch of launch customers. It is likely that something similar would be done for the Galaxy S4 and it has its own followers and popularity for it dominate at a standalone event.

Price

The Galaxy S4 should follow a similar price format as the Galaxy S3, which just lurking beneath the S$1,000 barrier at S$998. While Samsung phones are no longer being viewed as inferior as compared to the iPhone, it would be counter-productive for Samsung to price the phones significantly higher, with other smart phones like the Nexus 4, which would probably be available in Singapore at that time likely to be priced at about $700-$800.