Just a week after the launch of the Galaxy S4 smartphone, based on the Exynos 5 Octa processor, Samsung has revealed it will ship a new version of the smartphone that will be based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 CPU.
The Galaxy S4 with Snapdragon 600 processor will be available in the UK, USA, Canada and Sweden where customers will find it unlikely to be able to purchase an Exynos 5 Octa-based Galaxy S4 smartphone.
One of the reasons for this decision might be LTE connectivity and its wide availability in these markets. Unfortunately for Samsung the Exynos 5 Octa does not support LTE unlike the Snapdragon 600 processor which has it readily available.
The Samsung Exynos 5 Octa is an eight-core chip which has two processors inside that cannot operate at the same time. The first one is based on four ARM Cortex-A15 cores at 1.6 GHz and handles demanding tasks while the second CPU has four ARM Cortex-A7 cores at 1.2 GHz and handles simple tasks. As a comparison the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 has four Krait 300 cores at 1.9 GHz and Adreno 320 graphics. Performance should be similar but the Exynos 5 Octa will likely be the faster processor.
How can you distinguish the two versions? The Galaxy S4 (model I9505) will have the Snapdragon 600 chip, while the Galaxy S4 (model I9500) will be based on the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor.
Source: GSM Arena