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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 release date, price & specs unveiled


SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 DESIGN

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is thinner and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy S3
While the S3 looked and felt, well, quite plasticy, the Samsung S4 looks that much nicer and more like the high-end phone that it should be. It has a polycarbonate case, but it's now slimmer (7.9mm) and lighter (130g) than its predecessor.
Two versions of the phone will be available: Black Mist and White Frost. It's hard to pass judgement on the phone until we've seen it in the flesh, but in the shots we've seen it certainly looks like a step up from the Samsung Galaxy S3.
Available in black or white, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is instantly recognisable
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 SCREEN:
As expected, the Galaxy S4 has a 5in Full HD (1,920x1,080) Super AMOLED screen. That's a stunning 441ppi, making this one of the highest-density phones that we've seen. The HTC One manages slightly more at 468ppi, thanks to its slightly-smaller 4.7in Full HD screen. On balance, though, you're going to find it hard to tell the difference or spot individual pixels on either screen.
There was no mention of the Green PHOLED technology, which was rumoured to be making its first appearance here. However, we've been impressed with Samsung's Super AMOLED technology before and it's always been power efficient, helping to save battery life.
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 CAMERAS: Cameras are an important part of any smartphone, with many people preferring them to compact cameras. From the specifications, Samsung hasn't let us down with the Galaxy S4 camera, with a 13-megapixel rear camera, complete with Flash and a high-speed shutter mode. At the front is a 2-megapixel camera.
The 13-megapixel rear camera certainly has impressive specifications, but the front camera can be used to control the phone SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 PROCESSOR The Galaxy S4 will be available with two different types of processor, depending on where you are in the world. There was much hype before the launch about the new 1.6GHz Octa-Core Samsung Exynos 5 chip. The company tweeted a rendering of the new chip, which is also rumoured to power the new Galaxy Note 3 phone/tablet, from its @SamsungExynos Twitter account, so whetting the appetites of Samsung fans everywhere. The new chip's eight-core design is based on ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. This means that there are four powerful Cortex-A15 cores for the phone's most power-hungry functions, and four lower-power Cortex-A7 models to take care of simpler tasks. When the phone isn't needed to do anything fancy, the more powerful cores shut down, extending battery life. However, at the launch Samsung confirmed that the UK version of the phone will have a measly four cores. The good news is that the UK S4's Snapdragon 600 chipset will run at a faster 1.9GHz, which will hopefully go some way to making up for the cores shortfall.
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 BATTERY
Speaking of battery life, the new handset will use a 2,600mAh battery. That's 500mAh bigger than the one in the S3 and should be big enough to cope with the slightly-enlarged screen, and the greater demands of 4G, while still running all day. The battery is also removable, so you can carry a charged spare if you're going to be out for a long time. It also means that a failing battery can easily be replaced.
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 4G AND WIRELESS
You can't make a modern phone and not support the latest wireless standards, so the Samsung Galaxy S4 has full support for 4G LTE networks. Global 4G support has been promised, supporting download speeds of 100Mbit/s and uploads of 50Mbit/s. Full 3G and 2.5G support is, of course, also present. For use at home there's also better Wi-Fi support, with the new 802.11ac standard supported. We've seen this networking standard deliver speeds well over 200Mbit/s, so using super-fast broadband speeds on your phone at home is going to easy.
SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 STORAGE
No great surprises on the storage front, with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models announced. However, it's good to see that there's still a microSD card slot, so you can add up to 64GB of storage. Depending on the prices, it may even work out cheaper to buy a lower-capacity model and then upgrade it when you need to with a memory card.

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