New renders of the Samsung Galaxy S4 turn out to be faked

The Samsung Galaxy S III was subject to legendary secrecy before it was announced, and the Galaxy S IV looks like it’ll be no different. Earlier today we thought we might have a glimpse at a press render of the new smartphone, courtesy of the usually reliable @evleaks Twitter account.

But just hours ago, the truth broke out – unfortunately, the images were just renders produced by UK retailer Expansys. That means that they’re likely just guesses anyway, based on what previous rumours have said. The news throw a heavy dose of salt over the proceedings, and within a few minutes of this news breaking @evleaks deleted the offending tweets, presumably to not sour their good name.

We may have a better shot from indirect sources – for example, we’ve recently seen third party Galaxy S IV case designs that may be full of hot air, but just might hold some clues to the phone’s eventual look. We also still have a fairly good grasp of the phone’s specifications, thanks to a benchmarking result tallied by popular tool AnTuTu as of late. While this too could be faked, the optimist in us really wants to see Samsung announce a 5-inch Full HD device using the ARM big.LITTLE architecture, for a total of eight CPU cores and a class-leading PowerVR GPU.

We’re sure that we’ll see plenty more leaks over the next nine days, but it’s doubtful that we’ll see the real deal until just before or after the phone is announced at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York on March 14th.

What do you make of the leaks – are you following them with interest, or are you just going to be tuning into the real deal next week? Let us know in the comments below or via our @Gadget_Helpline Twitter page or Facebook Page.

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