The Samsung Galaxy S4 would be the logical successor to the Galaxy S3, and it has reportedly been sighted in a benchmark test.
For months various rumors hinted towards a release of the Samsung Galaxy S4 before the middle of 2013. A number of reports speculate that the Galaxy S3 successor could arrive either at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) or the Mobile World Congress (MWC), and hit stores in the months following its unveiling. The launch of the new handset may even coincide with the release of LG's rumored flagship, the Optimus G2.
The Galaxy S4 GT-I9400 model has now been spotted on the nenamark 2 benchmark database, but the specs revealed in the listing are not at all impressive, at least no by this year's standards for flagship smartphones.
While various rumors had indicated the Samsung Galaxy S4 would sport a 5-inch Full HD touch screen display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a future Exynos 5450 processor, the benchmark lists a handset with a WVGA display, a 800 x 480 resolution, and a 1.2Ghz CPU with an ARM Mali-400 MP acting as the GPU.
The previous rumors actually suggested an entirely different list of specs and features for the purported Samsung Galaxy S4, including 2GB of RAM, Mali-T658 GPU, and the latest Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system.
The leaked specifications are not only weak, but seem fake altogether. It's hard to believe that Samsung would use a WVGA resolution display or a dual-core processor for its next-generation smartphone, especially since the handset would comes as the successor to the all-mighty Galaxy S3 hit.
The good news, however, is that Samsung seems to have started doing software tests for its next flagship device, if the GT-I9400 is indeed the next Galaxy S smartphone. The tests would also fall in line with Samsung's previous schedule, as the first test firmware for the Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 showed up in December last year.
It is also worth noting that the first Samsung Galaxy S3 firmware was also tested on a device with a resolution of 480 x 800 and a dual-core processor, so this should not be an indication of how the device would ultimately look like. For now, not even the Galaxy S4 name is for sure.
