The Android smartphone market in 2013 is as over-crowded as ever. But
when it comes to the very high-end, luckily for everybody, there are
not that many options. Every manufacturer has a single flagship and
that's it. Or is it? Last time we checked, Samsung has been selling not
one, but two flagship smartphones and to make matters worse, they both
go under the name of Galaxy S 4.
Potential buyers are left scratching their heads as both versions are
priced about the same, with prices varying only negligibly from market
to market. And both handsets are virtually indistinguishable from one
another, too.
That's right, they both sound the same, they both cost the same, and
they both look the same, but on the inside - their brains are quite
different. The Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 is powered by a quad-core
Snapdragon 600 chipset, while the Galaxy S4 GT-I9500 relies on Samsung's
own Exynos 5 Octa chipset, which, as its name implies, makes use of no
less than eight CPU cores.
The Galaxy S4 Octa is available only on a few select markets, and the
Snapdragon 600 version is shaping up to be what we like to call the
"international" model. Despite what some would have you believe, the
reason for pushing the (initially intended only for the US) Snapdragon
version to international markets is not its exclusive LTE support. It
seems both chipsets are perfectly capable of providing LTE connectivity.
It's manufacturing issues that Samsung is blaming for the low
production numbers of its home-brewed Exynos 5 Octa chipset. This is the
reason behind the shift of the Snapdragon 600 into being the more
widely available offering.
Samsung i9500 Galaxy S4 (black) and Samsung i9500 Galaxy S4 (white) in the flesh
We finally have the two versions on our proverbial desk. All that's
left is to see whether the different brains also mean different hearts
and souls. That - we'll only be able to tell, after we're done with this
shootout. So you are welcome to join in. One thing's for sure, both of
these are some of the fastest smartphones to have set foot in our office
and we better hurry up so we can catch up.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
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