I think this is one of those things where you simply do what you can do in lou of what you cannot do. Samsung can't magically make batteries significantly more efficient, and they can't make their CPUs magically faster, and they can only do so much with Android customization as they are clearly not a software company.... but they are more than capable of making displays with higher pixel count, and moving from plastics to metals, so that is what they are going to do.
The problem is that they are rushing after the high from the SGS3, and that lightning simply isn't going to strike twice so quickly together. Focus on battery life, storage performance, and camera. If someone can get a pureview class camera on a phone that lasts more than a day or two, and can have decent load times then they will win over the business of much of the more mature smartphone crowd.