Friday, February 7, 2014

Samsung officially announces Black Edition Galaxy S4 and S4 mini, coming this month

All of Samsung’s latest devices have featured a leather-like back. Samsung has been taking the complaints about its device build quality seriously, and while changing a phone’s rear plastic texture doesn’t seem like a big deal, it does make a big difference in its look and feel by making the device grippier and less cheap.

The Galaxy S4 and S4 mini came out before this new trend started, so anyone that buys those handsets are getting “cheap” plastic backs. What is Samsung to do? Release new versions of both phones, of course. Samsung’s Black Edition devices recently appeared online and were shown to have no hardware differences from their older siblings, aside from the leather backplates and black fronts. This means that the Galaxy S4 will still be powered by a Snapdragon 600 processor.

Now the Black Edition Galaxy S4 and S4 mini are official, as Samsung has not only announced them, it even gave them a release window. The newly-reskinned devices will launch this month in select markets, so the US may never see them. That’s probably for the best, as we don’t need more variants of the Galaxy S4 hitting shelves right before the announcement of its successor. Yes, the Galaxy S5 should be announced soon, so re-releasing a Galaxy S4 seems a bit useless to me.

Despite my thoughts on the Black Edition phones, people in Samsung’s select regions will be able to buy them this month, and I’m sure they’ll be happy with them. The Galaxy S4 and S4 mini remain solid devices. What do you think of Samsung re-releasing old devices right before the launch of a new model? Leave a comment!