After first announcing that it would launch the phone during the worldwide launch announcement in March, Verizon has officially begun pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S IV, though the phone will not launch this month alongside other carriers and will instead be launched in late May, on the 30th to be exact through stores.
Verizon has yet to confirm when the phone will be available online and through Telesales. The GS4 will cost $249.99 before a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year agreement, bringing the total to $199.99 after. The phone itself will be identical to other carrier variants in terms of specifications, save for the necessary radio changes for Verizon’s network.
The phone features a 5-inch AMOLED display at 1080p resolution with a pixel density of 440 ppi, Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s Touch Wiz UI, quad-core 1.9GHz 800 series Snapdragon S4 with 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel main camera that shoots 1080p HD video and a 2-megapixel user-facing camera.
It also includes a litany of radios, including 802.11a/b/c/g/n Wi-Fi, NFC, IrDa standard infrared port for home appliances, Bluetooth, and GPS along with a digital compass, accelerometer, and a barometer to detect humidity and ambient air pressure.
Another key addition to the S4 is the new series of contactless display gestures Samsung calls Air Gestures, which can be used to change audio tracks, advance photos, or switch between browser tabs by waving a hand across the front of the S4.
glamorscene