[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Beefheart:
The general consensus on here is still that the I9500 is the phone to get. That it's somehow the 'proper' S4 and the I9505 is a pretender of some sort. Well I'll be honest, and unusually for me, I did little to no research on the S4 prior to purchasing one so was unaware there were numerous models. So when I upgraded from my two-year-old Galaxy S2 to my Galaxy S4 I decided to do it on the basis of having a play with it in the shop for ten minutes and liking what I saw.

Then a few hours after getting it home and checking out XDA Devs I realised I didn't have the model with the Exynos chipset in it and I can't lie, I was disappointed and felt a little cheated. But then over the next few weeks I started seeing the advantages, despite there being disadvantages too. The support out there for the Qualcomm Snapdragon being the obvious one. It's an open source chipset, and as a result the transfer of Android builds like CM, AOSP, AOKP and Paranoid Android are easy to get working. This is shown by the first working builds of CM and AOKP (albeit with a few bugs) being built by someone who didn't at the time even own the phone, and within a couple of weeks of the phone's release. At the opposite end of the spectrum the Exynos has little to no documentation which leaves developers fumbling around in the dark for months as shown by what happened in the past with the S2 and S3, the latter of which I believe still doesn't have a proper stable CM build despite being over 12 months old now. I get the distinct impression you won't see a proper working I9500 CM build for months, where as there are half a dozen non-stock builds on the I9505 already. For people who will be sticking with stock this doesn't mean much, but I have read the disappointment of enough I9500 owners to know there are a lot of people out there who are annoyed about this -- there are a lot of people who don't like TW and, if they own a I9500, they're currently screwed. Also, in terms of chipsets, you have the recent articles about the issues with the Octacore and how Samsung themselves aren't even using Exynos on their upcoming models and are going with Qualcomm. And when it comes to support in Android, Qualcomm is the better option simply because far more devices use it.

Another advantage is provided by Google themselves. It's now common knowledge that they're releasing a Nexus version of the S4 based on the I9505, this means a proper stock-stable AOSP build will be available for the I9505 as soon as that phone is released. Sure, it might not work 'out of the box' so to speak, as there are bound to be differences. But nothing the boffins on this forum won't overcome in quick fashion I'm sure. I imagine this will also result in much more stability in CM and AOKP builds.

Then you have LTE. While it's an advantage, personally, I can take or leave this as 4G coverage in the UK is s**t and currently only one network supports it and people have to pay through the nose. My network (O2-UK) won't have it until the end of the year and even then it will undoubtedly cost a fortune. I'm happy with 3G speed myself. I certainly didn't buy an S4 on the basis of it.

Of course, there are a couple of disadvantages, namely the lack of a Wolfsen chipset and what looks to be a slightly lesser camera sensor. I'd like both of these of course but can live without them as it's not as if what you get on the I9505 is rubbish in comparison. Also, you have a slight performance advantage with the I9500 but nothing you would see outside of a benchmark application. Do people think the extra 13% performance on Quadrant will translate into real world use? Of course not.

So to sum up with a few questions would I be disappointed to own a I9500 instead? Definitely not, it's clearly a fantastic phone and I don't find TW too bad an option. But would I swap my I9505 for an I9500 looking at all the available facts at this moment in time? No, and I'm not just saying that because I own one.