Korean version of Samsung Galaxy S4 (SHV-E300S) pops up online with quad-core CPU

The Samsung Galaxy S4 rumor mill has been grinding for a couple of months already, but it’s not yet at full throttle, so there might still be a while until the “next big thing” will become official. But that shouldn’t stop us from talking about it, especially with rumors piling up.

The latest news alert comes from GLBenchmark’s database, where a (not so) mysterious Samsung SHV-E300S has jumped through a couple of hardware test hoops for the first time. Although we’re not 100% certain about it, the E300S is said to be the Korean variant of the GS4 (elsewhere known as the GT-I9500 or the SGH-I337).

If this in fact proves to be the S4, the GLBenchmark listing is pretty much the classic good news – bad news scenario. Which one do you want first? Okay, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

Apparently, the S4 won’t be powered by the brand new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa CPU. Honestly, that’s not exactly a major shocker and it’s just one more reason to be excited about the next Galaxy Note, which will most definitely have that beast beneath its hood.

But getting back to the Galaxy S4, we should tell you that we have every reason to believe the absence of the octa-core chip won’t be a problem. Once again, if this is the S4 and if the benchmark results are legit, Sammy is guaranteed to recover the “world’s fastest smartphone” crown.

The SHV-E300S has only taken two tests in GLBenchmark 2.5, but the results are mind-blowing. The 41.3 fps in offscreen high-level 3D performance and 39.4 in onscreen speed make the S3 and GNote 2 look downright ridiculous. Meanwhile, not even the HTCButterfly can close in on those scores, getting stuck on 29.7 and 28.1 fps respectively.

And no wonder the E300S looks to be in record-breaking form even before its release. After all, there appears to be a quad-core 1.9 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU inside the super-phone, an Adreno 320 GPU and probably 2 GB of RAM (if not more).

The display resolution seems to be the one we’re all craving for (1,920 x 1,080 pixels resolution, or Full HD), although the diagonal size is not mentioned anywhere (our money is still on 5 inches). Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean will most likely be on board, while this particular model of the GS4 is said to be headed to SK Telecom Korea with LTE.

Simply put, this is a dream come true, so the next step is for Samsung to pinch us next month and make it all official. Can you picture it?