Hasta La Gadget!

T-Mobile announced a slew of new items during its UNcarrier event in New York City where they officially launched their LTE network in seven markets across the US, as well as announced a handful of LTE devices that will be available on the carrier, one of which is the Samsung GALAXY S 4, which CEO John Legere says will come “about May 1.”

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 has yet to get an official release date from any of the major carriers in the US, until now. T-Mobile announced that the new smartphone will be hitting T-Mobile sometime in early May, with CEO Legere saying sometime around May 1. There doesn’t seem to be a solid release date, but early May looks to be a good guess at this point.

Legere mentioned May 1, but it’s possible that the official launch date could be moved back a couple of days, which is probably why he added the “about” to his statement. Either way, this gives us a good idea on when other major carriers may launch the GALAXY S 4. We have yet to hear from Verizon or AT&T about their plans on when to launch the new device.

With the HTC One delayed, it’ll be a photo finish as to what device will launch first: the GALAXY S 4 or the HTC One. The HTC One has been pushed back to a late April release, which barely beats out the proposed May 1 release date of T-Mobile’s GALAXY S 4. Naturally, the first phone to release usually gets the spotlight, so it’ll essentially be a race to see who gets to the line first.

T-Mobile Samsung GALAXY S 4 available early May is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Excited about the Galaxy S IV? Maybe you are, but haven’t had a chance to hold it. Or maybe you just haven’t seen it lined up against its biggest (smallest?) competitor, the iPhone 5. Here are some high quality renders of the two side by side from our good friend Martin Hajek. More »

In a surprising announcement by the CyanogenMod dev team, they have announced that they won’t be developing for the Samsung GALAXY S 4, or at least there’s no plans currently to support the new device. Team Hacksung member XpLoDWilD says that “nobody at team hacksung…plans to buy it, neither develop for it.” Team Hacksung is the group behind the official CM ports.

The dev team mostly blames the different variants of the new device, one being the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 version in the US, and the international version which will rock out an 8-core Exynos 5 chip. They also note that many of the bugs present on the Galaxy S III will most likely be there on the GALAXY S 4 as well, most notably issues with camera support.

There’s also the issue with Samsung locking down their platform tightly. Samsung wants to protect their IP, which obviously makes for very developer-unfriendly devices. Of course, the company works around carriers and such, but they haven’t been too friendly toward independent developers as of late.

Of course, there will mostly likely be other ROMs available for the GALAXY S 4, and while other developers are following in the footsteps of the CyanogenMod dev team’s decision to pass on the new device, there will still be some developers who want a stock version bad enough that they’ll be willing to jump through the necessary hoops to make it happen.

[via AndroidCentral]

CyanogenMod developers will not support Samsung GALAXY S 4 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The tango between Samsung and LG is starting back up again. LG is accusing Samsung of infringing on one of its eye-tracking patents. Specifically, the dispute deals with Samsung’s “Smart Pause” on the GALAXY S 4 and “Smart Video” on the Optimus G Pro, both of which automatically pause video when your eyes stray away from the screen.

LG claims it applied for the patent in 2009, as well as other eye-tracking patents as far back as 2005. There’s nothing that the company can do right now, but once the GALAXY S 4 officially launches late next month, they’ll be able to investigate and see whether or not Samsung infringed on one of LG’s patents.

Samsung denies any infringing on LG’s patent, and the says that it uses its own technology for “Smart Pause.” LG’s Optimus G Pro was unveiled at Mobile World Congress last month and is expected to release sometime next month in the US, and there’s already an update out for the new phone that enables eye scrolling, similar to Samsung’s “Smart Scroll.”

This isn’t the first time that LG has turned up the heat on the battle between the Optimus G Pro and the GALAXY S 4. Before the GALAXY S 4 launch, LG trolled Samsung in New York City by placing a clever and bold ad directly on top of Samsung’s ad for the new phone, officially mocking the company before the phone has even been unveiled. Of course, this is only the start, so we’re bound to see more skirmishes between the two companies in the near future.

[via The Next Web]

LG accuses Samsung of infringing on eye-tracking patent on GALAXY S 4 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While we have yet to hear an official release date from any of the US carriers about the Samsung GALAXY S 4, the UK is getting on the ball. British carrier EE — UK’s only LTE carrier — has announced that they’ll be offering the GALAXY S 4 starting on April 26, with pre-orders beginning March 28.

Pricing is still a mystery, however, but we’re guessing that we’ll see the price tag for the new phone before it opens up for pre-order toward the end of the month. We’ve already heard from a couple of US carriers as far as availability, with AT&T and T-Mobile both announcing that they’ll be offering the new smartphone.

We’re guessing that more and more carriers will come forward in the next couple of weeks, though, since Samsung announced last night that the GALAXY S 4 will support 327 mobile carriers in 155 different countries. The phone will also be available in 3G and 4G LTE in multiple bands, with Samsung president JK Shin saying that the phone supports all frequencies and standards.

As for other UK carriers, both Orange and T-Mobile have announced that they’ll be offering the GALAXY S 4, although they have yet to announce availability and pricing, but it should be the same as EE, since both Orange and T-Mobile are subsidiaries of EE. However, we’re guessing that many carriers will model their release dates after EE, give or take a few days. We should be hearing more details from carriers soon.

Samsung GALAXY S 4 coming to the UK April 26 on EE is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.