Samsung will unwrap its latest
blockbuster smartphone, the Galaxy S4, at the Radio City music hall in New York
on Thursday evening as the South Korean phonemaker tries to bring the fight to Apple's
home market.
With Samsung rumoured to have ordered a
production run of 100m handsets and research firm Strategy Analytics predicting
the S4 will ship 60m units by Christmas, Seoul is going head to head with
Silicon Valley for dominance of smartphone sales.
The Guardian will be reporting live from the
unveiling of Samsung's most hyped handset yet when proceedings begin at 11pm
GMT (7pm EST). Expected big features include wireless charging to a screen
controlled not just by touch but by eye movements.
The Galaxy S4 should outdo the latest iPhone
in areas such as photography and processing power, if the leaks are correct,
but will still lag behind Apple on the quality of materials and the selection
of apps available to the Google Android operating system it uses.
Every leaked screenshot so far suggests
Samsung will retain the Galaxy's shiny plastic case, leaving Apple, which
prefers aluminium, steel and glass, in its own category when it comes to
external appearances.
The most eyecatching new feature is likely to
be an extension of the ability to control the touchscreen using eye movements.
A front-facing camera tracks the gaze, which in existing Galaxy phones is
already used to stop the screen going dark while pages are being read, and to
adjust the picture to the viewer's line of sight.
Trademarks called "eye scroll" and
"eye pause" were registered by Samsung in Europe in January,
suggesting two new functions, and these appeared to be confirmed by screenshots
posted to specialist website SamMobile on 6 March.
The shots showed a menu of options, including
one to "select the speed of scrolling when the device detects that your
head is moving up and down", and suggested it would apply to emails and
web pages. The menu also stated: "The device pauses videos when it detects
your head moving away from the screen."
The rear facing camera is reported to be 13
megapixels, compared with the iPhone 5's 8, while the front-facing camera is
also higher at 2 megapixels, which should improve the quality of video calls
and self-portraits.
The S4's screen should be larger too, at
nearly 5in (12.7cm) on the diagonal, an inch more than the iPhone 5. Processors
with two cores are enough to make Apple's latest phone one of the fastest in
the world but the S4 is understood to feature Samsung's eight-core Exynos 5
processor.
Like Nokia's flagship Lumia handset, the S4
will, according to South Korean publication DDaily, have the option of being charged wirelessly. Rather
than using leads the phone is placed on a charging mat, which is itself is
plugged into the mains.
The wildest rumour so far, put forward by Patently Apple, which monitors intellectual property filings,
is that of a 3D camera for still shots and videos. The US Patent and Trademark
Office published a filing last week by Samsung that shows a logo for such a
feature. Doubters say 3D images make uncomfortable viewing and have not been
popular with buyers of television sets or in the few smartphones
that already feature them.
Where Apple retains a lead over Samsung is in its apps
store. Google's Android software platform, which Samsung uses for the Galaxy
devices, has attracted a large number of developers and its store is predicted
to be the first to reach 1m apps. But content creators still reserve their best
products, such as new games, for iOS software because Apple's customers spend
more than Android's. [Source]
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