Samsung Galaxy S4 Release Date Set for 15 March

The launch of Samsung's latest and greatest flagship smartphone has in recent years almost attained the media attention previously only given to Apple launches. 2013 is going to be no different and speculation has begun on when and where the Galaxy S4 will be launched.

The only thing we can take for granted is that Samsung will launch a successor to the hugely successful Samsung Galaxy S3, and we can safely assume it will be called the Galaxy S4. Beyond that we are into speculation, and rumours have already begun to circulate that the launch of the device could take place as soon as next month.

A trusted source within Samsung has spoken to website Sam Mobile, and has reportedly confirmed the announcement date as 15 March, two months earlier than the launch of the Galaxy S3 last year.

The 15 March this year falls on a Friday, which is not a typical day for a high profile consumer electronics launch. The date is also known as the Ides of March, infamous as the day when Julius Caesar was assassinated, having previously been warned: "Beware the Ides of March." Will Apple now be repeating this phrase around its Cupertino campus?

There is confirmation as to where the launch event will take place, with London chosen as the destination for the global launch of the S3 last May, but the source does speculate that the launch will take place in the US this time around.

Reasoning

The reasoning behind this is that launching the phone in the US will garner more attention in that country, where the iPhone is currently the single biggest selling phone. invitations to this unconfirmed event are expected to be sent out to media following the Mobile World Congress trade show taking place in Barcelona later this month.

Samsung had been rumoured to unveil the Galaxy S4 in Barcelona, but the company announced last week that it would not be holding any media event at Mobile World Congress.

This ties in with a move away from announcing flagship models at trade shows like MWC or CES which took place in Las Vegas last year. Following Apple's route of holding its own press conferences, Samsung garnered huge worldwide attention for the S3 last year.

The source also spoke about the expected retail release of the Galaxy S4 and in line with earlier claims that the Galaxy S4 would go on sale from the second week of April, the source suggests the S4 will be released from the beginning of April.

Oddly, the source said the new phone will be available in eastern European countries first, followed by the rest of Europe and Asia by end of April, while America, Australia and Africa will have to wait until May or June.

Octa

The Galaxy S4, also known as "GT-I9500", is rumoured to be powered by the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa chip, which was unveiled at CES last month and features an eight-core CPU and eight-core GPU. This is expected to be paired with 2GB of RAM.

The phone is expected to have a larger 4.99in Full HD screen and a 13-megapixel rear facing camera capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30fps. This is in line with most recent smartphones released by Sony, ZTE and Huawei, all of which had 5in Full screens and 13 megapixel cameras.

The phone will come with the latest version of Google's smartphone operating system, Android 4.2.1 (Jelly Bean). It is expected to launch in a range of colours including black and white.

At the moment, this is all rumour and speculation, but as we said at the top, the Galaxy S4 is coming in 2013, it's just a matter of waiting and seeing.