Galaxy S4 Release Date Delayed Due to Issues With Exynos 5 Chipset

By Vincent Funaro, Christian Post Reporter Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Galaxy S4 release date has reportedly been delayed by issues related to the octa-core Exynos 5 chipset. Samsung is allegedly suffering power-related problems with the processor and will not have it ready for the rumored March 14 unveiling.

Piper Jaffray's Gus Richard recently spoke with Barron regarding the matter and has confirmed that this throws a wrench in Samsung's plans.

"We believe Samsung's Galaxy S4 has slipped and the Galaxy S3 has been in production a quarter longer than expected," said Richard in the report. "We believe the S4 is being delayed primarily due to power issues with the company's eight-core Exynos Octa… We believe the company is likely to shift more to external source. We believe QComm will pick up more of Samsung's S4 business."

This report by Richard lines up perfectly with many of the recent rumors that have pointed to Samsung using the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chip for the Galaxy S4 over its own Exynos 5 chip, and the company may have had to shift its plans in order to get the head start it was originally aiming for.

DigiTimes reported earlier this week that Samsung was having issues with the Exynos 5 and that the company made the decision to use the Snapdragon S4 instead. Overheating and high power consumption seems to be the main problems with the Exynos 5 chipset.

Some of these reports also stated that Samsung would only be releasing one version of the Galaxy S4 that would run the Snapdragon chip unlike the Galaxy S3 which used a quad-core chip for the international version and a dual-core chip for the U.S. variant.

Sammobile weighed in on the problems Samsung is having with Exynos 5 stating that the real issue is with LTE connectivity. The site also stated that there is a possibility that Samsung could launch a non LTE version that uses the Octa-core chip.