The stage is set for the grand unveiling of Samsung’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S IV at the Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday. The function will also be streamed live to Times Square. The Galaxy S IV will be Samsung’s response to the iPhone 5 as well as the next version of iPhone expected to arrive later this year. Samsung is rumored to have loaded the Galaxy S IV with a wide array of latest technology to compete with Apple’s offerings. Among the favorites is the trademarked Eye Scroll feature, which will track the movement of the user’s eyes and scroll a page automatically when the user nears the end of the page.
At present Samsung is the biggest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, but in the same high-end segment as Apple’s iPhone the Korean manufacturer is still in second place. However, many analysts see a strong possibility that Samsung might rise to the number one spot this year, with the launch of the Galaxy S IV and Apple’s continued troubles with the iPhone 5. An analyst from IDC suggested that it is possible for the latest Samsung flagship to sell more units than the upcoming iPhone successor over the next year or so.
This is supported by the fact that Samsung expects to ship 100 million Galaxy S IV devices by the end of 2013. In comparison, the best Apple has performed is with the iPhone 4S which sold over 100 million units in nearly 15 months. This aggressive competition strategy from Samsung can present major issues for Apple as raw material manufacturers may begin reallocating their resources in favor of Samsung.
Samsung, in a teaser ad, claims that their new flagship will be among the most brilliant innovations to come to the market since color televisions. The S IV is rumored to pack a 5-inch screen with 1920×1080 resolution, which will give it a spectacular 440 PPI pixel density, where the iPhone only has around 320 PPI. The S IV may also feature a 13-megapxel rear facing camera in comparison to the 8-megapixel one on the iPhone and the processor on the S IV may have four or even eight cores while the iPhone features only a dual core processor at present. This puts Apple under tremendous pressure surrounding the next device in the iPhone family and the company will have to wade through a significant amount of negativity that surrounds the brand at present.
