Less than 24 hours before Samsung’s big Mobile Unpacked event starts in New York City, the star of the show has made an early appearance. The Galaxy S4 has been pictured in detail and put online, giving us an early look at the fourth generation model.
You’ll probably notice that the design is identical to the one that leaked earlier in the week on video through a Chinese forum. Whilst we were unsure of the legitimacy of the design the first time around, we’re beginning to think this could well be the finished thing.
Chinese site IT168 has all the high-res pictures, showing the 7.7mm thin handset in all its glory. Yes, it looks as though Samsung will out-do itself yet again in terms of thinness, building a handset that’s razor thin.
The design matches the teaser image posted by Samsung recently, with a blue-black finish and curved corners. It also looks as though a chrome effect bezel will run around the edge of the phone, adding a classy touch.
The leak also confirms the hardware packing in Samsung’s imminent launch – a 13 megapixel camera, 1.8GHz Exynos processor using ARM’s new big.LITTLE architecture, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, the PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU and a micro SD slot. Interestingly the graphics chip used is the same as the one in the iPhone 5, but it’s been supercharged to almost double the clock speed.
We’re also told that the phone will feature similar S Pen features to the Galaxy Note II, although the phone won’t come with a stylus. This backs up recent rumours of Floating Touch tech, and so the user will be able to scroll by hovering a finger above the display, for example.
We’re still not sold on the back plate of the phone pictured. It’s a silver-ish grey with a dimpled finish that doesn’t match the colour on the front of the phone. We have a feeling that this will change to match the handset, along with the finish.
Tune in at 11PM tonight to hear the official line from Samsung and find out everything you need to know about one of the biggest phones of the year.