The Samsung Galaxy S IV will be announced at an event on March 14th in New York. It's so close we can almost feel it in our hands. And thanks to the leaky ship that is the internet, we've got a pretty good idea of what to expect once it's real.
Last year's Galaxy S III wasn't just a great Android phone—it was a blockbuster. Ten months is enough for any device to lose some of its shine, but when it was released it was the most hotly anticipated Android phone ever made, and it's since moved some 40 million units. The Galaxy S IV is going to need a monster overhaul both inside and out if it wants to play leapfrog again.
Availability
Samsung opted out of this week's Mobile World Congress to make its Galaxy IV impression, opting instead to invite the entire known universe to a March 14th blowout announcement all its own. Mark your calendars in ink.
After the phone's finally official, expect a US on-sale date up to two months later, with phones hitting Europe a little before that. That puts the street date in May or June.
Name
We have no reason to think the new flagship won't be called the Galaxy S IV (S 4?), though it might lead to a little confusion. The Qualcomm processor in the GSIII is called the Snapdragon S4, Apple's flagship a few years ago was the iPhone 4s, and Google's current Android envoy is the Nexus 4. All those similar names start to blend together, huh? No matter. If Apple can call every big tablet an iPad, Samsung can keep its numerical progression.
Design
The Galaxy S III's polycarbonate plastic body (below) has the distinct advantage that you can drop it a million times without destroying it. But man, no matter what color you paint it, the hardware is intensely ugly compared to the iPhone.
Last year, you could get away with functionality alone, but in 2013, the once-dopey Android market is full of handsome handsets. Notably, the HTC One just shed its plastic shell for a Jony Ive-style block of aluminum.
Information on the GSIV's design is thin. The just-announced Galaxy Note 8.0 has the same plastic build as the GSIII, so it may make sense that Samsung keeps consistent across the whole product line. Let's hope not, though.
If you're into highly unsubstantiated rumors based on photographs of printed pictures, here's how one supposed leaked press image has it:
Then again, plenty of folks are confident that the Galaxy S IV will have a (here non-existant) home button. Safe to say the jury's still out, but it will definitely be a rectangle that makes phone calls.
Display
Everyone seems to think the GSIV is going to be bigger than its predecessor. Rumors originally pegged it for a 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 AMOLED, 440 PPI display, compared to the 4.7-inch touchscreen on the GSIII. More recent reports indicate, though, that Samsung has had to ditch the AMOLED in favor of Full-HD SoLux display.
Screen quality is a core selling point right now, and Samsung must be feeling the pressure to increase screen resolution and pixel density from its competitors. Apple has been unrelentingly touting its "retina" displays, and the new HTC One's 4.7-inch, 1920 x 1080, 468 PPI display puts the 310 PPI screen on the GSIII to shame.
As for the bigger display, it's in keeping with Samsung's tendency towards industry-leading size, not to mention that the company has previously indicated plans for a 5-inch Full HD screen in the product roadmaps it flaunts at trade shows.
Camera
By now the Galaxy S III's camera is unacceptably bad by flagship phone standards. Camera performance has become increasingly important, and companies like Nokia—with its excellent PureView processing technology—and HTC—home of the UltraPixel—stealing the limelight from previous leaders.
A few rumors and some supposedly leaked images over at Androsym say that Samsung will outfit the GSIV with a 13-megapixel camera. That also happens to be the same resolution as Sony's latest 1/3-inch Exmor Rs image sensor. If this is the case, the company will probably roll out some kind of visible (if not necessarily effective) new processing tech.
Even though Samsung doesn't really have a reason to gamble on the S IV, the company been investing heavily in imaging technology over the last few years. And last fall that tech started landing in its mobile devices. The Android-enabled Galaxy Camera released last fall was run by the company's mobile team—even though the 24x zoom lens and 16-megapixel 1/2.3-inch image sensor was ripped directly from an existing digital imaging product. Otherwise, from its screen to its guts, the Galaxy Camera was basically a GSIII. In other words, Samsung already installed a larger 1/2.3-inch camera on a Galaxy S phone. There's no reason it couldn't ditch the 24x lens that made the Galaxy Camera bulky and put that larger sensor on GSIV.
In December, Samsung's digital imaging team told Gizmodo that it was very serious about the potential of products like the Galaxy Camera—and that there would be news on that front "soon". It's reasonable to think that soon is now.
Battery
A larger battery—something in the 2600 mAh range—seems to be a no-brainer. The 2100 mAh battery on the GSIII is painfully inconvenient. Indeed, every large, LTE Android phone is suffering growing pains because these phones just can't make it through the day. A bigger, higher-resolution screen on the GSIV would only exacerbate the issue. Don't expect anything massive like the monster 3300 mAh Motorola Droid Razr Maxx's, but an upgrade to a 2300mAh battery—which serves the HTC One well—would be the minimum, and realistically, it'll need something much larger to keep from frustrating the hell out of customers.
Wireless charging has also become more commonplace on new top-end phones; it would be somewhat disappointing if it the new GSIV didn't have it.
Operating System
It seems almost a lock that the GSIV will launch with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean); other Samsung products are already up to speed with the latest and greatest, so the flagship will be as well. Key Lime Pie won't be official until Google I/O in May, and it's likely Google will reserve at launch for its next Nexus device.
It won't be pure Android, though, because of course not. Samsung's TouchWiz UI will return to the GSIV with an update and probably some nifty new features. There's a rumor that Samsung is building an app called "Samsung Orb" to take 360-degree panoramas, which seems at this point like an obvious win.
The Samsung Galaxy S IV may also add touchless gestures. This rumor cropped up in early February and we're only mentioning it because Samsung has already implemented the tech in other products. Samsung SmartTVs, for instance, already have motion cameras that let you control menus on board. Many Samsung cameras also support a few gestures already, including zoom and shutter release. It seems likely enough that you'll see the same on the GSIV.
Guts
As with the GSIII, there will be two versions of the phone for LTE and non-LTE markets. In the US, the 1.7 GHz, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 used on the HTC ONE is a good bet because of its integrated LTE.
In international markets without LTE, the current wishful-thinking rumor is that the GSIV will run the crazy 8-core Exynos 5 Octa chipset that Samsung announced back at CES. That would be way, way more power than processors on other flagship currently on the market. Probably more than the GSIV needs. Because of that, we might see the less-ambitious Exynos 4 Quad instead.
As for other internals, Samsung probably doesn't need to bump the GSIII's existing specs much. You don't need much more than 2GB of RAM these days. Besides the obvious 32GB and 64GB of storage, there could be 128 GB version as well.
Networking, carriers, connectivity
The GSIV probably won't evolve much in this area except for the possible addition of wireless charging. The phone will almost certainly launch on AT&T and Verizon followed later by Sprint, with 4G LTE support across the board. There should be Bluetooth and NFC onboard as well, potentially with some cheeky pairing and sync features. Wi-Fi, duh.