The Samsung Galaxy S4 headed to the UK won’t have the company’s eight-core chip, but will instead be fitted with a quad core Snapdragon 600 processor, according to the latest report surrounding the handset. It seems the South Korean conglomerate has backtracked regarding the CPU that will feature in its latest to slot into the famed S line.
Pocket-lint says it was told the Galaxy S4 would come to the region with the company’s in-house 1.6GHz octa-core Exynos 5 CPU, when the gadget was launched about a week ago. The website decided to conduct its own little investigation into the matter of processor type used, after there were doubts raised regarding the same from mobile blog Omio. It reached out to a few contacts at Samsung and received an official response which states that the GS4 for the UK will be available as a 4G device with a 1.9GHz quad core processor.
So what will this mean in terms of performance and speed? That part isn’t quite clear, but it is likely a decision made based on 4G LTE connectivity. The same kind of choice was made with the GS3, but that affected only the version headed to the US. Said variant of the previous S device has been given a dual core processor, although it runs at a slightly higher clock speed.
The concern is that the Exynos chip will be tailored to consume less power and so will effectively allow for extended usage on a single charge. This SoC, it is said, will be able to switch to the second set of four cores when less power-draining processes are being executed. But it must be noted that the difference in performance could be marginal, if at all present, since the Snapdragon 600 is a newly released chip and one that is very capable.
Since the company’s major launch event in New York, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has hit pre-order status in the region, settling at a price of more or less £550 there. And we can’t really be certain of what kind of performance figures the quad core processor will bring along and how it will affect operation, until the device is launched towards the end of April.