Samsung has purportedly commenced its production of the application processor that will power its successor to the Galaxy S3.
According to a report published by Korean newspaper Digital Daily, the Galaxy S4 is currently scheduled for a release during the first half of 2013.
The next-generation smartphone's first system-on-chip, which is codenamed Adonis and will feature the Exynos 5400 series moniker, will be tested during the closing stages of 2012.
The SoC itself will apparently be a quad-core model that utilizes a 28nm high-K metal gate process and will be based on the Cortex-A15.
Speculation has suggested that Samsung will announce the Galaxy S4 during February 2013 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with a global launch due to follow a month later in March.
The Galaxy S3 itself is one of the best-selling Android smartphones of all time, with the device selling 20 million units in its first 100 days of sale. The commercial success of the handset spearheaded Samsung's profits to over $7 billion.