Samsung Galaxy S4 Release Date For Faster LTE-A International Version Closer, as Device Passes Through the FCC

A faster Samsung Galaxy S4 may be on its way to the United States, as the Korean variant with an upgraded chip has been spotted at the FCC.

The original Samsung Galaxy S4 is no slouch, but the international version of the device has faster LTE-A access and, more importantly, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. Spotted under model number GT-I9506, the new Samsung Galaxy S4 is expected to be announced before the IFA 2013 consumer electronics showcase this September in Berlin, according to SamMobile.

Bolstering those expectations now is the fact that the GT-I9506 variant has been spotted at the FCC this week, a key step before getting a release date in the U.S. Now that it's been through Bluetooth certification and the FCC, it seems almost assured that the faster Galaxy S4 will be appearing in the U.S. soon.

Accoridng to SamMobile's calculations, the quad-core Snapdragon 800 can provide a performance boost to the device of anywhere between 20 percent and 30 percent, along with more than double the GPU performance.

The current Samsung Galaxy S4 device that is most common in the U.S. has a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 system on a chip, clocked at 1.9GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU. Since the Galaxy S4 was released, the faster Snapdragon 800 chip has been first seen on the LG G2 - a competing handset, which was unveiled earlier in August. The international Galaxy S4 will be able to compete with the G2, as it's expected to have the Snapdragon 800 chip clocked at 2.26GHz, assisted by 2GB of RAM. It will run on LTE wireless, along with the LTE-Advanced spectrum. Other specs for the device are expected to remain the same, including a 5-inch display with Full HD 1080p resolution, a 13-megapixel main camera and Android 4.2.2.