Samsung announces Galaxy S IV with 5-inch inch display, Octa-core processor and late April release

Alex Allegro | Mar 14 2013 - 4:19 pm PT

The curtain was just pulled off the Galaxy S IV at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York City tonight. Confirming the leaks and teasers we’ve seen over the last week, the Galaxy S IV’s design is similar to the Galaxy S III aside from a few minor aesthetic tweaks.

The Galaxy S IV weighs just 130 grams and it’s only 7.9MM thick. In terms of specs, it will come in two colors at launch—Black Mist and White Frost. It’ll also include 4G LTE and HSPA+ 42MB, like the S III. It will also feature a 5-inch inch super AMOLED HD display at 441PPI, and, at launch, it’ll ship with Android 4.2.2 Jellybean and be available in 155 countries on 327 mobile carriers by the end of April.

Other specs include a 2,600mAh battery, as well as a 13MP back camera, 2MP front, an IR blaster, and 8 sensors including a temperature and humidity sensor.

The Galaxy S IV will ship in three available models—16GB, 32GB, and 64GB —each with 2GB of RAM, and it boasts a 1.6GHz Exynos Octa-core chip or a 1.9GHz quad-core Qualcomm depending on the market.

Nifty Samsung-branded features of the device include many new camera features, such as: “Drama Shot”, which allows you to take a 100 pictures in 4 seconds; Dual-Camera, allowing you to use both the front and back camera at the same time when taking a video and video chatting; and a new TouchWiz feature, which may or may not be exclusive to the S IV, includes a handy translation function.

Although it’ll require a data connection, the S IV will be able to provide instant translation for email, text messages, and ChatON in nine different languages. Eye tracking tech, which was rumored pre-launch, has also been confirmed as a new feature, and the Galaxy S IV will automatically scroll on webpages and email when you’re reading on the device and pause a video you’re watching if you look away.

Samsung also announced tonight a new service and feature called “Home Sync”. Home Sync is a “web-connected, network-attached hard drive for your home. Home Sync is like a photo share syncing to home device. Personal cloud service. Also works via NFC.” Home Sync is available for up to eight users on a network and has 1 terabyte of storage. Samsung said it’s “great for holding memories.” The Home Sync will retail for $299.

S Voice, the personal assistant on your Samsung device, received an update on the Galaxy S IV for its “driving mode”. When you use S Voice while driving, the font will be bigger. Samsung also claimed the assistant will have a better, clearer sounding voice when talking. S Voice Drive will even have more text-to-speech function for more third-party apps to help you avoid having to look at your device while driving.

Air Gesture is another new feature that’ll be seemly exclusive to the S IV. Air Gesture allows you to control your phone without ever touching it. With just a swipe of your hand, you can do all the same things as you would when touching it by just hovering your fingers over the device.