20 million Galaxy S4 sold worldwide

Generation after generation, nothing seems to be able to stop Samsung. And despite some rumors claiming that Galaxy S4 sales are losing steam, the flagship smartphone has nothing to worry about.

JK Shin, Samsung’s mobile division president, has declared that the ultra high-end smartphone is selling very well. Today, the sales number are out and add some serious weight to those declarations.

With the twenty millions units milestone crossed off the list, the Galaxy S4 has set a new record in the Android world. It only needed 70 days to reach these sales when its older brother the Galaxy S3 had needed 100 days to reach the same point.

In its home country alone, South Korea, the Galaxy S4 has shipped more than 500 000 units. There is no doubt left now of the S4′s overwhelming success in the world, and the arrival of the Galaxy Note 3 should only solidify Samsung’s global domination.

The Galaxy S4 Google Edition will not get updates through Google

As we told you earlier today, the Galaxy S4 Google Edition is now available for order on the Play Store here in the US. It will offer a pure Nexus experience to all those who want stock Android while still showing off all of the Samsung high-end’s qualities.

While this version of the S4 forgoes the TouchWiz overlay and all associated features, there is a significant upside to this slimmed-down version: updates.

With this announcement, many thought this meant the device would be in sync with the other Nexus handsets with regards to updates, but this does not appear to be the case anymore.

Indeed our peers over at AnandTech have gotten their hands on the Google Edition (reference number GT-I9505G) source code on Samsung’s Open Source website. This likely means the manufacturer will be the one to issue updates to the Google Edition S4 devices and not Google.

And while the Mountain View firm offers this stock version of the Galaxy S4, it seems they are reluctant to add it directly to the Nexus lineup. As the Nexus brand is meant as a tightly Google-controlled showcase of stock Android’s abilities, each new iteration in the product line is designed under close scrutiny by software giant, which they cannot do with Samsung’s handset. Thus there is no “Google guarantee” of product performance or quality, despite the overwhelming critical success attained by the S4.

On top of this, Samsung, despite being Google most influent partner in the Android and more generally mobile ecosystem, is still a competitor — much the same way Apple buys many of the displays equipping their iPhones and iPads from Samsung and yet wage a ferocious legal battle against them. Google’s reluctance to dub the S4 Google Edition a “Nexus”, therefore, comes as no surprise.

Bottom line: it is likely users will still have to suffer a delay before getting each update, though that delay will probably be much shorter than the current waiting time for run-of-the-mill Galaxy S4 devices which tend to depend not only on Samsung’s release schedule but also on mobile providers whims.

The Galaxy S4 rewarded for its high quality SUPER AMOLED display

As it has consistently been made clear by all the reviews written up by the tech press, the Galaxy S4, Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, boast a Super AMOLED display of the highest quality.  Today, this display was acknowledged and rewarded by Underwriters Laboratories.
As you probably already know, the Galaxy S4 is equipped with a five inch Super AMOLED display featuring a Full HD resolution. On top of these base specs, Samsung has implemented the Adapt Display technology which allows  the screen to adjust the colors levels depending on light conditions. This can be set to manual or automatic adjust.
Underwriters Laboratories has therefore rewarded the Galaxy S4′s AMOLED display for its achievement in quality. The smartphone was acknowledged, in particular, for the high level of color fidelity. In this domain, the Galaxy S4 covers 97% of the Adobe RGB spectrum: around 30% more than most of the competitors on the market.

New photos confirm Galaxy S4 Zoom design

As we revealed the first visual of the Galaxy S4 Zoom earlier, new snapshots of the device confirm the appearance of this connected camera coming soon to retailers near you.

When this first visual surfaced earlier today, we voiced some doubts as to its credibility. Now, those doubts are erased as those pictures lend weight to the first image we released.

On découvre donc un terminal à l’apparence très familière avec le Galaxy S4 Mini, auquel on aurait ajouté un zoom optique x10. Au niveau de la résolution de l’appareil photo, le capteur disposerait d’une résolution de 16 mégapixels.

In a few words, we have what looks close to a Galaxy S4 Mini with a 10x optical zoom added. The digital camera sensor is confirmed to be 16-megapixel capable.

Get the Galaxy S4 in any color you want with Colorware

Are the basic black and white colors available for the Galaxy S4 not for your taste? Are the blue, brown, red and purple casings which will come out in a few weeks not tickling your fancy either? How about getting a personnalized color of your choice?

For a thousand dollars, Colorware allows you to pick any color in the visible light spectrum for your Galaxy S4. And for this price, the Galaxy S4 is NOT included. This is the prohibitive price of having a unique smartphone.

Colorware will use your money to take your phone appart. clean it thouroughly, paint it and reassemble.

A Snapdragon 800 version of the Galaxy S4 coming soon?

As you know, the Galaxy S4 sold in North America comes equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. On top of this, around 70% of all Galaxy S4 models sold worldwide come with this CPU, with the rest running on Exynos 5 Octa chips made in-house by Samsung.

Today, the AnTuTu benchmark database saw the apparition of a new entry in the shape of a Galaxy S4 equipped with a Snapdragon 800 running at 2.3GHz. The device runs Android 4.2.2, is 4G/LTE enabled, and the scores an underwhelming 24179. Oddly enough, the older, slower S600 performs better on the same hardware and software specs. It is likely, however, that this is only a prototype which has yet to be optimized at all.

Depending on the source, if such a model was released, it would be a release limited to South Korea in September. In any case, if a new version of the S4 was released with a third different processor, it would further complicate following the hardware lineup, but that’s what we’re all about here, so we’ll do our best to clarify the state of things to come.

First visual of the Galaxy S4 Zoom?

On June 20th, Samsung will throw their Premiere 2013 event, where new Android and Windows Phone handsets will be revealed. Among them, the Galaxy S4 Zoom could make an appearance.
What we think is the Galaxy Camera‘s spiritual successor is a variation on the Galaxy S4 core device, and will spearhead the second generation of connected digital cameras.
According to the latest rumours, the Galaxy S4 Zoom will be equipped with a 4.3″ qHD display, and will run on a dual-core chip @ 1.6Ghz. Most interesting feature of the phone, however, will be the 10x optical zoom coupled with the 16-Megapixel digital camera.
And while we had some ideas concerning the tech specs of this future device, we had no idea what this hybrid would look like. Today, we got our hands on the first credible visual for the Galaxy S4 Zoom.
Avec une allure très semblable au Galaxy S4 auquel on aurait ajouté un zoom optique, ce visuel nous laisse quelque peu perplexe. Même si l’allure parait tout à fait plausible, cela ressemble fort à un montage sous Photoshop.
With a design that sticks closely to the Galaxy S4, with an added optical zoom lense, this design has us a little perplexed. Even if its curves are plausible, this looks a lot like a photoshopped manipulation.