Samsung is reportedly getting ready to show off the Galaxy S4 at a New York City event on March 14, but could the company's flagship phone be running into some trouble?
Rumors are circulating today saying a key part of the Galaxy S4's internal technology may not be performing up to Samsung's high standards, and that the Korean company will have to replace it with a rival chip.
The tech in question is Samsung's highly-touted Exynos 5 Octa eight-core processor. Apparently Samsung is having a difficult time manufacturing enough of the chips to meet the Galaxy S4's expected demand. What's more, the Exynos 5 Octa's power consumption levels aren't meeting expectations, and Samsung can't get the level low enough level to make it practical for smartphone use.
Because of these issues, the DigiTimes (via Expert Reviews) is reporting that the company is planning to swap the eight-core processor for Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro. Obviously the Snapdragon wouldn't be as powerful as Samsung's custom-built octa-core chip, but it wouldn't be the first time a Galaxy phone made room for rival chips. The U.S. version of the Galaxy S3 shipped with a dual core Snapdragon chip, too.
Samsung never officially declared the Galaxy S4 would use the Exynos 5 Octa chip, but most rumors have assumed it would. Again, there's no evidence yet to even declare the rumors of a swap as true, either, so at this point we just don't really know.
The Galaxy series is essentially the only device that's been capable of competing with, and even outselling, Apple's iPhone. The Galaxy S4 is hotly anticipated, and although the reveal event is scheduled for March, many analysts don't expect the phone to roll out until April.
Here are the latest rumored specs:
- Mali-T678 (8-Core) GPU
- 4.99″ SuperAMOLED Full HD Resolution Display
- 2GB of RAM
- 13-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of shooting 1080p Full HD Videos at 30FPS
- 2-megapixel front-facing camera capable of shooting 720p HD Videos
- Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean out of the box.
