Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 leaks denied as details of flagship phone emerge - The Guardian

Claims that specifications for Samsung's forthcoming flagship Galaxy GS 4 - to be launched in New York on 14 March - have been leaked online have been denied by Expansys, the British company which specialises in selling unlocked phones.

A series of tweets on Tuesday morning from @evleaks, an account which focusses on the smartphone market, suggested that the phone will have a super AMOLED screen, a 13-megapixel rear camera, and LED flash.

Separate reports by the New York Times on Monday suggested that the S4, as it is expected to be called, will include an eye-tracking technology that will scroll pages on the screen according to where the user is looking, using a new system developed by Samsung and called Eye Scroll.

But the @evleaks tweets were quickly discredited after Expansys said that the diagrams that had been tweeted actually came from its own site - and that they were its artists' impressions of what a Galaxy S4 might look like, rather than actual pictures.

With the launch due next week, the handset is expected to start shipping in Europe by the end of March or early April, and in the US by June.

Samsung's integrated supply chain - meaning that it makes its own parts - means that few details about the phone have leaked out ahead of the launch. But it is expected to have a slightly bigger screen, at 4.9in or 5in, than the Galaxy S3 released a year ago.

Some estimates suggest that Samsung expects to sell 10m of the handsets per month, and 100m during 2013. It is also expected to run Android 4.2.1, come with 2GB of RAM, between 16 and 64GB of storage - and possibly up to 128GB - Near Field Communications, LTE/4G capability. It is forecast to have an eight-core ARM processor, possibly from Qualcomm.

Other rumours point to a gesture-controlled interface rather than a pen-based system. That would separate Samsung's phones even further from other Android rivals, and tie users more closely into its own ecosystem of apps and functions. Samsung is already the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and makes nearly half of all Android phones. It also has the second-largest profit in the smartphone business, behind Apple - with which it is one of only four companies making a profit in the smartphone business, along with Taiwan's HTC and Finland's Nokia.

Samsung has been building up its portfolio of services to distinguish itself from rival Android smartphone handsets for the past years. It is also expected to unleash a huge marketing and advertising campaign to go with the new phone: Samsung Electronics' marketing spending dwarfs that of any rival company, including Apple, Microsoft, and bigger names such as Coca-Cola.

However expectations that the GS4 might have a flexible display have been played down by analysts.

Richard Windsor, formerly with Nomura Securities and now an independent technology analyst, commented: "We have been waiting for these for over a year and still there is no sign of [bendable screens]. Some prototypes were shown at CES, but a quick ramble through YouTube will show you that those same prototypes have actually been on display for more than two years."

Windsor explains: "I think that the problem is encapsulation. The OLED substrate is very sensitive to degradation by oxygen meaning that the panel has to be perfectly sealed from the air. This has proved to be much more difficult to do in flexible plastic than rigid glass and I suspect that the yields are still so low that Samsung can not yet put it in a product."

He added: "This [flexible screen] is Samsung's silver bullet against the ravages on commoditisation in Android, but fortunately Samsung does not need it to work right away. This could be another story in another 12 months."

Samsung's chief product officer Kevin Packingham told the New York Times that the Galaxy S4 is "an amazing phone" overall.

The Guardian will be covering the launch of the Galaxy S4 next week from New York.

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