High-level Samsung executive confirms March 14 launch for Galaxy S4

The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be unveiled at the "Samsung Unpacked" event on March 14, a high-level Samsung executive has told CNET. The report adds that Samsung will soon send out invites for the event, which will be held in New York. 

Rumours about a launch date in March have been doing the rounds for quite a while now. The smartphone is rumoured to be out in Europe first, before it is launched pan-Asia by the end of April. The handset will make it to the shores of North America, Australia and Africa by the end of Q2. This is in line with what we heard earlier this year from Samsung’s Lebanon office, who said that the Galaxy S IV would be out before May, which is towards the end of Q2.

If true, the date douses all rumours surrounding the smartphone. A couple of days ago, a picture and some details of what is allegedly the S4 appeared straight out of the blue. According to a Samsung insider who spoke to SamMobile, the company will be ditching the AMOLED and Exynos technology to go with something that is unfamiliar territory for Samsung's flagship devices.

The leaked picture looks suggests Samsung has gone back to squarer edges with the S4. The source told the website that the sides of the device are made of aluminium but the back is still plastic, hinting at a removable back cover and a microSD card slot. The photo shows the official name of the device on the boot screen—Samsung Galaxy SIV (model number GT-I9500), putting to rest rumours that the company will rebrand its next Android flagship. It's rumoured the phone will be available in black or white when it launches.

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Perhaps the most important piece of information from the rumour is that the Galaxy S4 will no longer run on the company’s homegrown Exynos chipset. It is not known whether this is due to the same backdoor exploit related to the Exynos chipset that was seen on some devices earlier this year, but the sources told the website that the decision has more to do with the processor's overheating issues. 

The chipset rumoured to be powering the S4 was the Exynos 5 Octa. In place of that dual quad-core configuration, it is rumoured that Samsung will be using a Snapdragon 600 chipset, which will also be seen in the HTC One and the LG Optimus G Pro. However, Samsung is said to have overclocked the CPU to 1.9GHz, slightly faster than the 1.7GHz version ticking inside the other two handsets. 

The other big rumour is regarding the display. It was earlier reported that the S4 will come with a 4.99-inch, Super AMOLED, full HD display, but the website says Samsung has decided to stick to the same screen size, but will be using a full HD SoLux panel instead. It is not known whether this is based on SuperLCD3 like the HTC One. SamMobile says the change in display tech is due to problems with the production of full HD AMOLED screens at Samsung. 

The tipsters also revealed the device's other specs. The Galaxy S4 will have 2GB of RAM and will come in three variants - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. The device is said to be 140.1mm tall, 71.8mm wide and 7.7mm thick. The purported weight of the phone is 138g. 

According to the source, the Galaxy S4 will stick with one physical home button and will have touch buttons on the side, just like the previous devices in the Galaxy S line. However, this last piece of information is not corroborated by the picture, which has no signs of any button outlines. We played around with the brightness and contrast of the picture, but there was no noticeable ‘bump’ on the front and nor could we get a better look at the bottom of the device.