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We can guarantee that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be one of the year’s top devices, just like its predecessors during their time. We are expecting to see an announcement as soon as March 15 so you know the rumors are getting hot by now, and we have a few more for you today. Some of these specs we have already heard about while some of them are still up for debate, so let’s check them out.
According to a PDF file from South Korean financial services company Mirae Asset Group, Samsung’s upcoming top-selling device will have a 5-inch 1920x1080p display, Android 4.2 and 2 GB of RAM. It is also stated that it will not feature that super-charged octa-core Exynos 5410 processor we saw at CES. Instead, the Galaxy S4 should have an Exynos 5440 quad-core Cortex A15 processor.
The processor may not have twice the cores compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3, but it does go up to Cortex A15 from Cortex A9. This should still improve performance significantly. Plus, really… do we need an 8-core processor right now? Don’t forget sometimes more cores doesn’t mean better performance, like we saw with the dual-core Snapdragon S4. This SoC outperformed Tegra 3 processors with half the cores.
We are not sure how accurate this information is, so take it with a grain of salt. This South Korean financial company could potentially have close contact with Samsung, though. It is worth to at least keep the leak in mind as we approach any announcements.
[via Android Ice Cream Sandwich]
Motorola X or gtfo
Hopefully we see it at IO!
If the Moto X doesn’t have the water/dust protection like the Xperia Z does then I may be getting my first Sony phone :)
The water/dust protection of the Xperia phone is for me actually a negative thing. I use my phone a lot to listen to music – and with a headphone cover I will have always it dangling at the phone when I do so (until it finally breaks off that is).
I was looking at pics of the Xperia z and it looks like on the bottom right is where the 3.5mm port is…completely uncovered? Or does the bottom slide over to protect it? I’m not sure.
The headphone jack ist at the top, not the bottom and no, it is definitely not uncovered. Just google “xperia z headphone jack” and you’ll get several pictures how it looks like.
For the love of god, the case of Exynos “octa” is not the same as S4 vs Tegra 3
octa IS Exynos 5440 with a SEPARATE A7 quad chip so its just a QUAD core not 8 core
That’s just speculation, no one knows yet whether it has the capability to run all 8 at once.
Samsung already said it was the big little architecture.
They are two separate chips as demonstrated at the keynote, they don’t run at the same time, they just share workload depending on capacity, if the A7 gets maxed out than the tasks get handled by the A15, the only difference between the octa and just a regular A15 device is going to be battery life not performance, so here’s hoping for at least a 2500 + mAh battery.
speculation?
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/biglittleprocessing.php
lols you don’t pay attention… it’s a high powered quad slapped together with a low powered quad. the low powered quad handles the simple stuff and the big boy takes over (not joins in) when more demanding tasks are at hand. samsung themselves have stated that they will NOT work at the same time
AMD can call they’re chips Octacore . Therefor Samsung can as well.
Sir, what are you talking about?
AMD FX bulldozer,Piledrivers chips are TRUE octa core chips with 8 cores, that work at the SAME time, where the Exynos “octa” chip is two separate chips with 4 cores in each of them, when one chip is active the other get disabled, they can “never” run simultaneously
AMD does have 8 Physical Cores, however, 2 Cores share the same resources, including registers, therefore the AMD 8 Cores are truly Quad-Core.
Sorta… Even AMD doesnt really call it a core they call it a Bulldozer module however since the module is two cores sharing resources I would call it a 1.5 core. Lol
Bottom line is the architecture can run 8 threads individually. That makes it an 8 core, period.
Only some resources. They have a shared FP unit, but separate integer units. The FP units also function independently for each core for 128-bit operations. AVX (256-bit) operations require the two 128-bit units to be dedicated to the same core. They also have a shared frontend.
You are highly mixing apples with oranges here, what you are talking about has nothing to do what so ever with what we are talking about here, sharing resources or not they still cores that can work with each other, what are you referring to if underpowered cores but they are still there, what we are talking about is 4 separate cores that can never interact with the other 4 cores as they get disabled the moment the other comes to life…
Its not even a true 8 core. Its a 4×4. 4 powerful cores and 4 lesser cores. Poor mans 8 core. If we counted cores of all processors then the tegra 4 wins 4 full A15 cores and 72 gpu cores
You realise it’s designed like that on purpose, do you?
Power saving tell you anything?
I still don’t see why you need 4 lower cores. If you were doing something “demanding” wouldn’t it probably just use the 4 stronger ones? The 4 plus 1 design makes the most sense to me. Nvidia just needs to implement it better than the Tegra 3.
A15 is best for demanding applications. A7 is best at power savings.
The problem may be that pushing 1080p resolution with 1 core may not give the lag free performance we want.
Cause unfortunately A15 architecture proved to be not that power efficient at all, simpler A7 design, using multicore to better manage multi threads, should help improve overall performance.
you do realize this isnt a true 8 core right? Its a scapegoat. They could have easily put in 8 A15’s and clocked 4 as a power saving measure.
4+4=8 …
What’s the point of using 4 more complex thus more expensive, A15 core, then underclock them to a level where A7 can easily perform better? Plus it’s not only the clock, it’s the lenght of the pipeline that matters.
Has twice the cores of my us Verizon gs3
Well, I guess I was right. I saw no reason for an 8 core processor. I bet they couldn’t run it at full bore because of heat issues.
The OCTA core processor isn’t a true 8 cores, it’s two 4 core processors. One is a beast, and one a power saver for 95 percent of your day to day activities that require very little power.
Right, I understand that. I’m just guessing that the stronger quad core is going to have to be under clocked to not face overheating issues.
What? That doesn’t make sense. That’s the reason they have the lesser processor, as well. That way, the big one only has to perform when it’s needed, so it doesn’t use as much energy (which would result in less heat).
You should probably research the Octa, because you clearly haven’t..
clearly a Chavez wannabe with your hair. There can be only one.
you’re a moron.
You do realize it has 8 cores? Regardless of how you personally feel about it, Samsung with call it Octacore so there is no reason not to.
It doesn’t utilize all 8 cores at once. Maybe you should read up too…
It has 8 cores,it may not use all at the same time but all 8 cores are used so its not like it has 4 cores for no reason…this is using arms next gen big.little design so we can expect awesome performance with good battery life…I know it bugs some people that its called octa core but 4+4 does = 8
It doesn’t bug me. I know exactly how it operates so I’m not sure why you are responding to me. I never said it didn’t have 8 cores. What I said was that not all 8 cores are active at once. It’s two separate chips, one with A15 for power, one with A7 for battery. In the article he says, “Plus, really… do we need an 8-core processor right now? Don’t forget sometimes more cores doesn’t mean better performance” he’s inferring that all 8 cores would be active at once, which isn’t the case.
No, that’s not what you said, you arrogant dbag. You told him to do research on it because you are clearly a superior, all-knowing human. While doing so, you implied that it isn’t an octacore processor, which it is, despite how you feel about it. Now, when everyone called you out, you’re backtracking and trying to divert attention away from you’re original idiotic comment. And no, he’s not inferring. You’re inferring. The listener infers. Not the speaker. The speaker implies. And he might not have been implying that; he could have been implying that since it’s technically the same performance as two separate quad-cores, it may not be any snappier than a quad-core.
Someone has a baby penis, LOL!!!!!!!(cough Matt)
I’m not backtracking at all. You clearly aren’t understanding. Not once did I imply that it didn’t have 8 cores. I know exactly how many cores it has. I’m sorry you aren’t getting it. But thanks for trying.
Tommy Thompson, shut the heck up! It has 8 cores, and yes we all know they’re not all active simultaneously but the informed know that the A7 cores are there to help prolong battery life.
And yes we all need and want octa!
Let’s just call it dual quadcores lol. Since that is basically what it is.
Lol agreed
The bumped up specs are great and everything, but I want to see some real innovation. Specs aren’t everything, and at a certain point they just become meaningless marketing speak. I’m holding out for the Motorola “Phone X”, it sounds like it will bring a lot of innovative features to the table.
What do we know about X phone besides hype?
Hype!
interested to see how this performs compared to snapdragon 600/800
I’m holding out for the” x” phone Google will launch with Motorola. Google has their plan to drop Samsung down a notch so they are going to put out a badass phone. Plus if Samsung is staying with the same design I’m not interested in it.
Another misinformed cretin, ;sighs;
I agree with your distaste for the Galaxy S design. I kind of fell in love with the look of the similarly-specced Oppo Find 5.
The quad core Exynos A15 cpu will be just as good as the octa core. How many cores do you really need in a phone? Cory said it best in one of his videos.
Yeah.. all we need is just the new A15 architecture.. anything else is useless or just a tech fad..
Getting the Xperia Z… S4 not going to be anything special, Samsung turn I got into Apple slowly…. They know people will buy there phones no matter what!
*turning into
not true, they wont turn into apple until the galaxy s series outsells iphone. Right now they still wanna steal apple users.
Well, I think that’s what he’s talking about. They’re attempting to steal apple users by basically using the exact same marketing schemes. Who knows if they’ll start telling you what you can and can’t do with your phones once they have everyone?
yeah but I’m saying Samsung is in no position to relax, and they arent showing any signs of doing anything differently than they have been the past 2 years. They are still pumping out first class hardware. quad core exynos, 1080p, first US smartphone with 2gb ram i beleive? I just dont exactly get what would make you jump to that conclusion just because they decided to actually advertise.
Galaxy S series outsell iphone since 2011.
I meant Samsung are turning into Apple, with their advertising etc…..I had an S2 and loved it then when S3 came out they copied Apple and it put me off! I’m not dissing their advertising, if it wasn’t for that then they wouldn’t be no 1 now would they! I’m just getting bored of their plasticy phones, I’ve owned S2, S3 and have a Note 2!
I’m just really trying to understand where they copied Apple with the gs3 that is all. I personally don’t consider attacking apple in their ads to be copying apple since that is a tactic used in many industries. In just saying I don’t really are your angle. But we can respectfully disagree.
When Samsung launched the S3 in their pre-launch advert they were poking fun at Apple customer’s by saying not to become a sheep. I find this harsh after all Apple are suing Samsung for all their patents infringements! Now most Samsung customers get labelled as sheep; so that’s what I meant in my first comment but It probably came across wrong.
I understand what you are saying, i just love that type of advertising. I just personally love when BMW and Audi go head to head in advertising. I love when Tmobile goes after AT&T, or when Verizon tries to downplay the other 3. And i never hold manufacturers responsible for their sheep. Every manufacturer has its sheep. Even HTC, there are just much less of them since HTC is struggling. But that’s just my personal look on things. So you and I just seem to have different preferences on style it looks like.
Fair enough, I see your point…no hard feelings :)
To turn into apple they would have to sell crappy outdated phones.The only plus about apple is that they have.good hardware except for the iphone 5. Oh and no innovation for 5 years then they would be like apple.
I would argue that Apple’s software is what sets that apart, not the hardware. Everything on an Apple device is smooth and easy to use. That doesn’t have anything to do with the hardware.
The iphone 5’s chip is the most powerfull dual-core to date and beats many quad-core chips. What they have achieved in processor conception is second to none and considering they designed it all by themselves, it’s a massive leap forward, if no real innovation. Added to the fact that they also use best in class GPU (PowerVR, which no one else can afford), your point is very misleading.
Many things can be said about software but when it comes to hardware, Apple’s choices make perfect sense.
HTC ONE (M7) screw how the rest of yall feel, and kiss ma a$$
Why would anyone want 1920×1080 in a 5″ device??
Why not? It’s not gunna hurt.
Not exactly, it will either slow it down, or call for a more powerful & power-hungry GPU.
This is the year that Sammy drops the ball. I am calling it now.
upcoming top-selling device, great choice of words :)
Why would they not use Octa? For a phone Octa makes way more sense, it’ll be more power efficient than a standard quad-core!
wow can’t make up my mind this or xperia z
See big.LITTLE MP Use Model at http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/big_LITTLE_Final_Final.pdf for simultaneous A7 and A15 processing.
the fact that they’re not going to upgrade the processor too much should be a sign that processors are good enough for now. OEMs should focus on other aspects of their hardware, such as battery and cameras.