Samsung Galaxy S4 Coming in April

If you think the Galaxy S3 is the last of Samsung’s powerful ammo, think again. The reality is Samsung still has a lot to show, and it seems the next star will come out soon: The Samsung Galaxy S4.

There’s a new scoop about the Samsung Galaxy lineup. The upcoming iteration may appear in April. All its secrets will be revealed at next month’s Mobile World Congress which will take place in a new location (just 2.4 miles away from the old location), Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain. Considering the huge hype that Samsung garnered for its current flagship smartphone, it seems likely that the Galaxy S4 will be supported by all the major wireless carriers all over the world.

Built under the codename “Altius (J),” the Samsung Galaxy S4 still reeks of mystery. For now, we still cannot bank on “Samsung Galaxy S4” as its name. It may be in the South Korean-based tech firm’s best interest to veer away from any identification with the behavior Apple sets in launching its products.

In one of my previous articles, I discussed Apple’s practice of the “vertical integration” principle. You know, don’t compete with others; only compete with yourself. This way, the consumers will not compare your products alongside other tech firms’ products: People’s expectations will only concentrate on how you will build your next gizmo, and not consider your competitors. For example, in advertising, Apple does not talk about the iPhone 5 being the best smartphone in the world. It only says the iPhone 5 is the “biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone.” Since it’s difficult to assess the viability of the iPhone 5- both in theory and in practice- in the smartphone industry, not to mention among the smorgasbord of excellent smartphones on the market, one thing is for sure: The iPhone 5 is the best of all the iPhones. Period.

Another factor to consider is that Samsung’s hometown believes four is an unlucky number. If it’s a cultural landmine, there’s a high probability that the next flagship smartphone will carry an entirely different name.

Leaving its nomenclature as a topic for another debate, what we can fawn over are the rumored specs of the next Samsung Galaxy phone. Of course, it would be unfortunate if the next Samsung contraption does not run Android 4.2.1 (Jelly Bean) on an Exynos 4 octa-core CPU with a Mali-T658 GPU. 2GB of RAM is also expected. If we get the rumors right, we may have a chance to see a slight increase in screen size on the latest phone, say a 4.99-inch Super AMOLED full HD resolution display surface. Or how about a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera?

So far, we can only speculate about the most likely features of the next Samsung phone. But the first question to ask is: Will the next Samsung phone be any luckier than the Samsung Galaxy S3? Or will it suffer the same fate as many of the smartphones around?