Will Galaxy S4 give Samsung the 'iPhone killer' it needs?

SAMSUNG will unveil its hotly-anticipated Galaxy S4 handset this week and technology experts are already predicting the device will help the South Korean company steal the No. 1 position from Apple's iPhone.

The lavish launch of the S4, at New York's Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, is the latest "salvo" in the war between Silicon Valley and Seoul, says The Guardian. But while Apple once ruled the top end of the smartphone market, many forecasters expect the S4 to sell better than the iPhone over the next two years.

There are several reasons why Samsung has the whip hand. First, Apple has been weakened by rows with shareholders, trouble at its Foxconn factories and the iPhone maps debacle. Second, the Samsung brand is rapidly gaining ground, backed by a $5 billion-a-year electronics advertising budget that "dwarfs those of all its rivals", says the Guardian.

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The buzz surrounding the S4 is so intense that when photographs reportedly showing the new handset were posted on a Chinese website today they were copied and analysed almost instantly and quickly dismissed as either fakes or pictures of a prototype.

Rumours about the capabilities of the S4 have been doing the rounds for weeks. It is believed to have a "huge" 5-inch display (much larger than the iPhone 5's relatively compact 4-inch panel) that offers a market-leading resolution of 1920 x 1080.

There is speculation it will be powered by an "eight-core processor" and a separate "eight-core graphics unit" that would make it much more powerful than Apple's latest handset. Analysts are also expecting the S4 to be fitted with a high definition 13MP rear-facing camera capable of shooting high-definition video at 30 frames per second.

Even more exciting to those hoping for cutting-edge innovation is the rumour that the S4 uses eye-tracking technology to gauge when users want to scroll up or down the page. Samsung has filed a patent for a technology called Eye Pause, says the New York Times, but has not revealed what it does.

Samsung will "take its last steps in Apple's shadow" with the launch of the S4, says Forbes, because the handset will be the company's last to conform to the "form factor" defined by the iPhone. Samsung will really come into its own in 2014 when its innovative screen technology and its Tizen operating system allow it to "transform the computing and online experience, in a way that is unique to its own vision".