14 DAY TRIAL // Galaxy S III, Samsung Electronics’ current flagship Android-based smartphone, has been long rumored to see a successor in the first half of the year, and the device appears to have been just confirmed.
A photo that recently made it to Picasa, and which was taken with a device featuring model number SGH-N045, is said to come from the aforementioned device itself.
Dubbed Galaxy S IV, the smartphone is reportedly set to land on shelves with better hardware than the Galaxy S III, and said photo appears to confirm this as well.
The image, reportedly shot with Galaxy S IV SC-04E for Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, shows that the upcoming smartphone could sport a 10-megapixel camera on the back, if not a higher resolution one.
Said photo is around 9.6 million pixels (4128 x 2322) in size, but this might not be the top resolution at which the device can shoot.
Furthermore, the EXIF data attached to the photo shows that the device is running firmware JOP40D, which is said to be Android 4.1 Jelly Bean-based.
According to a recent post on Blog of Mobile, there is a great chance that the smartphone will indeed arrive on shelves at NTT DoCoMo as Samsung’s next flagship device, since the model number fits this wireless carrier’s usual numbering and naming scheme.
For the time being, however, we should take this info with a grain of salt, especially since Galaxy S IV hasn’t made an appearance at any certification forums out there.
Some of the previous rumors on Galaxy S IV suggested that it might sport a 5-inch or larger full HD touchscreen display, along with a next-gen quad-core CPU (if not the recently unveiled Exynos 5 Octa), wireless charging and other high-end specs, thus proving a worthy successor for the Galaxy S III, which has already sold 40 million units (in only 7 months of availability).