First, the dimensions. The Galaxy S4 will be 140.1mm long, 71.8mm wide, and just 7.7mm thick. This means the S4 is slightly longer and wider than the Galaxy S3 (to be expected with the larger screen), but a full millimeter thinner. The Galaxy S4 weighs 138 grams, up slightly from the S3′s 133g (again, probably due to the larger screen). All in all, and as we can clearly see in the leaked images, the Galaxy S4 will physically be very similar to the S3.
On the hardware side, the Chinese photos clearly show the S4′s 4.99-inch 1920×1080 display — though it still isn’t clear if this is an AMOLED or LCD display. The close-up photos hint that the Galaxy S4 will have a real RGB display, rather than RGBG PenTile, but we’ll have to wait until the official announcement later today to find out for sure. We also have confirmation that the Galaxy S4 — at least in China — will have an 8-core Exynos Octa 5410 SoC. The Exynos Octa uses four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8GHz for heavy lifting, and four Cortex-A7 cores in a big.LITTLE setup to perform background and less-intensive tasks. The new Cortex-A15 core is incredibly powerful, but at the expense of being very power hungry. The Exynos Octa will be the first mainstream use of a big.LITTLE setup, though, and it will be very interesting to see if the S4 (and Android) can make good use of those wimpy A7 cores.
Rounding out the hardware, the Galaxy S4 has a tri-core PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz (the same GPU as the iPhone 5′s A6 SoC, but at a higher clock speed), 2GB of RAM, a MicroSD slot, and a monstrous 2,600 mAh battery. The larger battery will help offset the larger display and power-hungry Cortex-A15 cores. The larger battery will also help with LTE connectivity — though, curiously, there’s still no mention of whether these leaked Galaxy S4s actually support LTE. A mobile carrier in the UK has said that its Galaxy S4s will support LTE, so we’re probably still looking at at least two versions of the S4: One powered by the Exynos Octa, and another powered by the Snapdragon 600 or 800 SoC with integrated LTE modem.
On the software side, the photos show that the Galaxy S4 will support eye tracking, though there’s still no details on how the tracking is being performed. There does seem to be a new aperture/camera at the top of the phone, which could well be the eye tracking hardware. It seems the S4 will also let you interact with the interface by hovering your finger over the screen, rather than touching it, which apparently creates an effect like the Galaxy Note’s S Pen.
We’re sure that both eye tracking and this S Pen-without-the-pen feature will be shown off tonight — so be sure to check back around 7pm ET for ExtremeTech’s coverage of the Galaxy S4 launch event in New York.
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