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Most people won’t really notice or care whether their Galaxy S4 has four cores or eight, according to Samsung mobile boss JK Shin.
Hardcore phone fans were disappointed to learn the S4 wouldn’t be coming to the UK with Samsung’s cutting-edge Exynos5 eight-core processor. We have to make do with a still powerful, but rather less exciting Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core chip.
For those fans’ concerns to be casually dismissed is a little galling, especially as early benchmarks indicate the octa-core version is significantly more powerful.
Shin told our sister site CNET News that Samsung was using different chips to ensure a steady flow of phones on to shop shelves. “We use multiple different sources,” he said. “It’s a sourcing issue.”
It’s worrying, then, that Samsung is already warning of possible supply problems at launch, due to “overwhelming global demand”. If demand is already so high you can’t keep up, why not at least make sure everyone has the best possible product?
That’s not to say Shin doesn’t have a point that most people will never know the difference. Antutu benchmarks cobbled together from different sources peg the quad-core S4 at a mighty 23,607 — but the octa-core version outstrips it with a staggering 28,018. By comparison, last year’s quad-core dynamo, the HTC One X, scored a meagre 10,827 in the same test.
There’s still very little in the way of games or other apps that will push last year’s flagship phones to the limit, as high-end hardware seems to have massively outpaced software development. So whether there’s even any point to having eight cores is a valid question — one my colleague Andrew Hoyle tried to answer here.
Andrew’s currently putting the UK S4 through its paces and will have a full in-depth review for you very soon. In the meantime, you can read our US counterparts’ review here.
Are you bummed the S4 will be only quad-core? Or are you still bagging one tomorrow anyway? Process your thoughts in the comments below, or over on our mind-bendingly powerful Facebook page.
