Samsung Galaxy S IV rumoured to launch with S Pen

If you thought you’ve heard it all about the highly anticipated Galaxy S IV, you may want to read this one. Phone Arena reports that the Samsung Galaxy S IV may launch with an S Pen, making it the first handset in the series to boast of that functionality. Rumours first surfaced on Korean website Enuri, and to substantiate things a little more, the report adds that this bit of information has been allegedly confirmed by a quote from Samsung. The S Pen is one of the Note's noted functionalities and the report suggests that by including this in the S IV, the company is looking to 'unite its Note series with the flagship S IV'.    

May launch with an S Pen

It was reported just recently that the Galaxy S IV will not be released at the Consumer Electronics Show 2013, but instead at an event after CES. It was widely speculated that Samsung would be launching its next flagship smartphone at CES 2013 after the company released a teaser trailer that tells the world to get ready for "Something New". However, it appears that at CES 2013, Samsung will instead focus on televisions and a range of other electronic products, the CNET report stated citing sources. None of these announcements pertain to any significant smartphone news. 

If the last rumour about the Samsung Galaxy S IV is to be believed, it may feature an unbreakable screen. In fact, reports suggest that if this is true, it could turn out to be a major selling point of the smartphone—considering the converging form factor.

The South Korean giant has been a popular name in the development of displays. Mark Newman, an analyst with Stanford Bernstein, recently stated that Samsung will eventually go for unbreakable and flexible displays. "Either the Galaxy S IV or S V will have unbreakable and even possibly flexible and foldable displays by 2014. That's going to be a game-changer."

UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois said, "Looking to the first half of 2013, we see evidence of Samsung likely accelerating the release of the Galaxy S IV - compared with May (this year) for the Galaxy S III. We believe preparations for volume manufacturing of unbreakable plastic substrate displays continue. All in all, we could see a strong products push in the high-end in the first half, followed by other releases."

Interestingly, reports in the past indicated that the Galaxy S IV will probably have a bigger and better display, quad-core processing power and a 13 megapixel camera with picture density improving to 441 pixels per inch (ppi), which is a big improvement over the Galaxy S III's 306 ppi and better than the iPhone 5's 326 ppi. 

For Samsung to use a 13 megapixel camera on its upcoming smartphone, the handset would require more processing power as well as extra RAM, presumably 2GB. If Samsung does use such a camera on its smartphone, then one would be able to capture images at a resolution of 4208 x 3120 pixels.

Apart from the one about the camera, another rumour states that it will feature a 2GHz quad-core Exynos 5450 processor. It is reported that this chipset will be faster than the one used on the Nexus 10 tablet that was recently introduced by Google; it will be made on a 28 nm process.

The Samsung Galaxy S IV is rumoured to be officially announced in April 2013.