Many are patiently waiting for the arrival of the international LTE-A variant (GT-I9506) of the Galaxy S4, which is powered by the almighty Snapdragon 800 processor and was recently spotted at the IFA, with specs confirmed to us by our insider. If you've been wondering exactly how powerful the device is going to be, then the graphical benchmark scores it has posted over at GFX Bench should leave you pretty impressed.
The GT-I9506 was able to eke out a few extra frames per second over the competition in almost every test, while walking toe-to-toe with the Galaxy Note 3. This is despite the device sporting exactly the same chipset as devices like the LG G2, so it's likely Samsung's software optimization playing a key role here (or the phone is overclocking the GPU to post higher scores, though that's something Samsung probably won't do on a Snapdragon chip). Either way, it's a powerhouse that won't disappoint.
There's still no telling when the Snapdragon 800-powered Galaxy S4 will hit markets, though it should be launching at least in Germany in the coming weeks. The benchmark lists it as running Android 4.2.2, but that should change to 4.3 at launch or soon after that, as the standard S4 is expected to be updated to 4.3 in October.
