Hasta La Gadget!

What’s in a Galaxy S4? A whole lot of easily repairable parts, it turns out. The fine folks at iFixit recently got their hands on Samsung’s smartphone flagship and wasted no time in tearing it asunder. Scoring an eight out of ten on the repairability scale, the GS4 puts up little defense to tinkering hands with only 11 screws standing between you and its innards. The front panel serves up the single source of difficulty since the glass and LCD are fused together and glued into the frame — so, you’ll have to scoop out most of its components to get to it and the Synaptics S5000B chip powering the tweaked capacitive display. Other than that, there aren’t really any component surprises. But don’t let that stop you from taking a full tour of the gore-y silicon glory at the source.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Samsung

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Source: iFixit

Samsung has a thing for releasing budget chasers soon after the main shot. There have already been strong hints of a GS4 Mini to capitalize on the flagship‘s buzz and now a purported leak over at hi-tech@mail.ru suggests another, even more cut-down model could be on its way, this time called the Galaxy Core. According to the Russian site — which has some pedigree — the Core has a 4.3-inch display with an 800 x 480 resolution, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 768MB RAM, 8GB of internal storage (plus microSD), a 5MP rear camera, 1,800mAh battery and likely Android 4.1-flavored TouchWiz. In other words, it could be very similar to the Galaxy S II Plus or the slightly smaller Galaxy S III Mini or the slightly bigger China-destined Galaxy Win — so similar, in fact, that it leaves us largely indifferent. The rumored price of 14,000 rubles ($430) also seems way overboard — although Russian prices often do.

Update: As a number of you spotted, this phone has another differentiating spec. It turns out dvuhsimochny means dual SIM, which makes complete sense when you say it out loud.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Via: AndroidBeat

Source: Hi.tech@mail.ru (Russian)

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Smitten with Samsung’s Galaxy S 4? Well, if you’re looking to pick on up right now, you’d best book a red-eye flight to South Korea, where it’ll go on sale in the next 24 hours. The 5-inch 1080p flagship will arrive on all three of the country’s main carriers, with an unspecified global roll-out following on Friday. Meanwhile, the company has also commented on “supply chain problems” affecting its roll-out of the S 4. In a statement to Sky News, Samsung said that initial supplies of the handset may be limited “due to overwhelming global demand” and its limited stock of memory components. The pinch is already being felt in the US, as both Sprint and T-Mobile reassess their launch dates in-store.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung Tomorrow, Sky News

After T-Mobile said yesterday that it won’t be able to offer Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 through its online store quite as soon as it expected, Sprint has today announced a similar delay. The carrier originally planned to have Sammy’s latest flagship available through all retail channels this Saturday (April 27th), but “unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung” have meant that although online and phone-based sales will open on that date as planned, you won’t be able to wander into a Sprint store and pick one up until those supply issues are solved. When that’ll be is anyone’s guess, but we imagine Sprint will get them into consumers’ hands as soon as possible in the hope of improving its balance sheet. See Sprint’s full statement after the break.

Update: Samsung has also responded with an official statement, citing “overwhelming global demand” leading to inventory shortages. We’ve added the comment underneath Sprint’s.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, Sprint

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Via: AllThingsD

Pre-orders of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 have already begun at AT&T, but the operator has been oddly silent about the actual date customers can expect to purchase one in stores and online. Now that T-Mobile and Sprint have both announced specific launch dates (April 24th and 27th, respectively), the largest GSM carrier in the country has followed up by declaring its intent to sell the flagship Samsung device on the 27th of this month. This is four days earlier than the anticipated pre-order shipment date, which means the HTC One has merely a full week to bask in the spotlight by itself. What’s more, if you simply couldn’t wait and jumped on those pre-orders, you’ll get yours a full 48 hours early (read: April 25th). As expected, the GS 4 will be offered for $200 (16GB) and $250 (32GB) in both black and white.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Samsung, AT&T

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Source: AT&T (Twitter), AT&T