Samsung developing Galaxy S4 variant with dust and water resistance
Finally, phone manufacturers are starting to take the notice of how delicate their flagship phones are, and working on making them more rugged. Or at least Samsung is.
Up until now, Sony’s had the advantage of having rhe only flagship phone in the market with IP55 and IP57 certifications floating around – the Xperia Z. Meaning, the only flagship device to be water and dust resistant, but if the words of Young Soo Kim are to be believed, that might be changing very soon.
If you’re wondering who Young Soo Kim is, he is the President of Samsung Gulf and during a Q&A session, he let slip that a water and dust resistant Galaxy S4 was in the works. It’s about time Samsung stepped up the game, especially given that the demand for higher resistance to corrosives has been pretty high. Samsung does have a few phones in its middle tier that are water and dust resistant, but a lack of such protection on the premium phones did not make sense.
Even if Young Soo Kim’s words are to be believed, it is quite possible that the rugged Galaxy S4 is only going to be a prototype that would not see the light of day anytime soon, if at all. At the end of the day, the only way to be sure that a device like this one is going to be hitting the market is when Samsung itself officially announces the same, which seems to unlikely at the time.
However, if you don’t care about the weather sealing and must have the Galaxy S4, it launches in India on April 26, and is expected to be priced quite competitively with respect to the iPhone and HTC One.