The Samsung Galaxy S4 is currently one of the best smartphones in the world. One would think that makes it easy to choose, however, the Samsung Galaxy S4 also comes in 3 different versions. Malaysia has two of these versions to choose from, the Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 I9505. Recently we only had access to the I9500 but soon vendors will be releasing the I9505 as well. Which one should you pick? Read on and find out.

While the Samsung Galaxy S4 is currently one of the best smartphones in the market the fact that the Non-LTE enabled Samsung Galaxy S4 or I9500 was the only one available when it was released meant that they couldn't take advantage of 4G LTE connections in Malaysia. Worry not, as Maxis have recently revealed that the LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy S4 or I9505 is coming soon. The price for the I9505 should not be any different from the I9500 and you can expect the smartphone to be available within the next few weeks.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 I9505 or the version with LTE and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor recently got a firmware update which has improved battery tests significantly. How significantly? Well, check out the test graphs below and see for yourself. The previous performance is marked in yellow:

Talktime Tests

Earlier rumours that Malaysia would be getting both the Non-LTE Exynos 5 powered Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV or I9500 and the LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV or I9505 have turned out to be true. While the Non-LTE Exynos 5 powered Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV or I9500 has been in the SIRIM database for quite some time, a recent search has also revealed the LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV or I9505 as well. Now, if we could just get our hands on the rumoured LTE-enabled Exynos 5 Samsung Galaxy S4 / S IV version supposedly only available in South Korea, our collection would be complete.

While many know that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is coming, few know that it is coming in two flavours. Like what some of our readers at the Mobile Mega Mall Facebook page have noted, the I9500 is powered by the 8-core Exynos processor but doesn't have any LTE capabilities while the I9505 model will be powered by the 4-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and have LTE capabilities.

Thankfully, Malaysia is one of the few countries that will be getting both models (which may lead to an I9500 vs I9505 comparison later on ;) ). The full list is below but not completely accurate (as in some countries might be missing).