Samsung to launch flagship Galaxy S4 at March 14 event

Invitations were sent out on Monday to a Samsung media event scheduled for March 14 in New York, where the company is expected to unveil its response to the iPhone 5: the flagship Galaxy S4.

After the invitations were sent out to a "Samsung Unpacked" event, CNet was able to confirm that the company is planning to show off the Galaxy S4. The invitation also strongly hints at the device, with the tagline "Ready 4 the Show."

Samsung's Galaxy S lineup represents the company's flagship smartphone, which competes head to head with Apple's newest iPhone models. Anticipation for Samsung's Galaxy S4 unveiling is so great, it's likely to overshadow most of the new products being unveiled at this week's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain.

Last year, the Galaxy S3 managed to surpass the iPhone 4S in quarterly sales prior to the launch of the iPhone 5 at the end of 2012. But by the fourth quarter of the year, the popularity of the Galaxy S3 had waned and the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S were the world's two most popular smartphones.

Samsung's next-generation Galaxy S4 is rumored to feature an eight-core Exynox processor along with a separate eight-core graphics processor. The device is expected to feature a 4.99-inch SuperAMOLED display, 2 gigabytes of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel forward facing camera, and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

Over the weekend, Samsung also unveiled its latest competitor for Apple's iPad mini, the Galaxy Note 8.0. The stylus-enabled tablet is larger than Apple's iPad mini by just an eight of an inch, and features a higher resolution 1,280-by-800-pixel display with 189 pixels per inch.