Samsung roadmap confirms 5-inch display and Q1 launch Galaxy S4

Samsung has outed its own roadmap showing a phone planned for Q1 which matches Galaxy S4 rumours

Samsung has reportedly shown a product roadmap during one of its presentations at CES 2013 which clearly shows Q1 2013 as a goal for introducing a ‘4.99-inch’ Full HD 440ppi displayed handset as rumoured for the Galaxy S4 flagship.

Previous rumours suggested the successor model to the wildly popular Galaxy S3 would arrive in either April or May, placing it in Q2. Certainly there’s the potential for some wiggle room on Samsung’s part, but this new information from CES would imply the Galaxy S4 will arrive earlier than was previously believed as Q1 would mean March at the latest.

It was believed that Samsung wouldn’t showcase its new flagship at Mobile World Congress in February, but assuming this Q1 schedule is accurate that’s now more of a possibility. Though, to be honest, we still expect Samsung to reveal its new device independently as doing so helps it generate more of a buzz.

It’s also good news that it will indeed sport a 5-inch Full HD display, but seeing as this is fast becoming the norm we never really doubted that particular detail for a second.



Other rumours remain ethereal: there’s been some suggestion the next Galaxy S flagship may take on Galaxy Note duties with an S-Pen stylus, but it’s also suspected of possibly being the debut device for Samsung’s flexible OLED display technology.

This latter point should ensure it’s more durable than Gorilla Glass-equipped rivals, but more importantly it could mean Samsung is doing something very interesting with the form factor.

We saw some prototype flexible screen handsets demonstrated at CES and the potential for some really beautiful and creative hardware is immediately obvious.

That said, it would appear this technology is still in a relatively early stage of development and although Samsung plans to release phones equipped with the flexible screens this year it's probably a bit immature for the allegedly imminent flagship arrival.

The Galaxy S4 is rumoured to be fitted with an eight-core ARM Cortex-A15 chip. Samsung announced its new Exynos 5 Octa at CES 2013 which runs a quad-core Cortex-A15 setup alongside a quad-core Cortex-A7 for handling lighter tasks and preserving battery power. It’s now expected that this is the chip we’ll see in the new flagship.



by via Know Your Mobile