There is more evidence today that Samsung is readying another Galaxy S4 variant, the GT-I9506 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. Following a leak yesterday that revealed its existence for the first time, more benchmarks have now surfaced courtesy of German site AllAboutSamsung along with news that this model could be headed to Europe.
The results identify the processor as the MSM8974 (none other than the Snapdragon 800) and confirm its pairing with an Adreno 330 GPU. The scores are lower than the ones seen yesterday: 27,886 compared to 31,123. The difference is attributed to these tests having been performed with a pre-production prototype.
The GT-I9506 appears to be the international variant of the Galaxy S4 LTE-A that Samsung announced for Korea. PocketNow reports that testing of the device has taken place in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. This would suggest that a fairly wide distribution is planned but it remains to be seen if the GT-I9506 will make it to our side of the Atlantic.
Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S4 in March with two variants: the international GT-I9500 with an Exynos 5 Octa processor and the North American GT-I9505 with a Snapdragon 600 processor. It is likely that more than one owner will be upset that Samsung is launching an upgraded model so soon after the first one.
There is no word on availability and pricing at this point. It is possible that Samsung will unveil the GT-I9506 at IFA 2013 in early September alongside the Galaxy Note III.
Sources : AllAboutSamsung // SamMobile // PocketNow