Give me 4G over octa-core in my Galaxy S4 any day

Give me 4G over octa-core in my Galaxy S4 any day
Eight? Now that's just silly.

Today the earth shattering realisation hit us: the UK and Australia won't, repeat WON'T, be getting the octa-core (yes, eight processing cores) Samsung Galaxy S4, with the Korean firm deeming us suitable for only four.

But you know what Samsung? Good. Even if a stupidly overpowered handset would see us swiftly from one homescreen to another and back again, we're still going to be stuck with a crummy 3G data connection.

While the quad-core Galaxy S4 may not seem quite as fancy, it holds a key trump card - 4G.

Now 4G itself is still a bit of a moot point in the UK, what with the service only being available via one network, and at substantial cost. But by the end of this year every carrier will offer the superfast service, and everyone will want a slice of the action, as we've seen with the LTE rollout in Australia.

You can keep your cores

When the 4G network does kick in fully, the last thing you'll want is to be stuck with a handset which forces you to miss out until your contract is up in 18 months time, or makes you pay a hefty fee to upgrade to a capable handset.

So if anything Samsung has done us a favour by not dangling the octa-core handset in front of our greedy eyes - as let's be honest, we'd so plump for that over the quad-core version out of sheer lust.

We're yet to hear a convincing argument as to why a smartphone even needs an octa-core processor. It's not like we're going to be running a small empire off the back of it, and that many chips makes us fear for the battery's life.

All your battery are belong to us

Of course people will point towards ARM's new big.LITTLE technology, but we still don't know for sure just how much of a difference it will make. It could mean an improvement, thanks to being able to efficiently manage tasks between high and low power, but we're a long way from seeing apps optimised for such things.

We seriously worry about the battery life in the eight-core toting Galaxy S4, especially when you consider the 5-inch full HD display it's got to power alongside the processor.

Samsung has stuck a larger, 2,600mAh battery into the S4 to compensate (up from 2,100mAh on the decently lasting Galaxy S3), but we're not sold just yet.

In short, the octa-core Galaxy S4 doesn't need to exist. Just give us all the 4G, quad-core version and be done with it - and if you even consider throwing such temptation our way in the future, there will be hell to pay.

That said, nothing would give us a bigger feeling of smug satisfaction then asking our friends, "So how many cores does your phone have?" only to hear them mutter "four" while we casually shrug our shoulders and go "well, mine has eight..."

Damn.

John McCann
Global Managing Editor

John joined TechRadar over a decade ago as Staff Writer for Phones, and over the years has built up a vast knowledge of the tech industry. He's interviewed CEOs from some of the world's biggest tech firms, visited their HQs and has appeared on live TV and radio, including Sky News, BBC News, BBC World News, Al Jazeera, LBC and BBC Radio 4. Originally specializing in phones, tablets and wearables, John is now TechRadar's resident automotive expert, reviewing the latest and greatest EVs and PHEVs on the market. John also looks after the day-to-day running of the site. 

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