Samsung may have denied the existence of a higher-end variant of the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S5, but an abundance of leaks and rumours suggests otherwise. The latest, courtesy of SamMobile, once again suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S5 Prime will come with a WQHD (2560×1440) display and adds a number of new details to the mix.
The report suggests that Samsung did consider giving the Galaxy S5 a WQHD display during development. Among the many prototypes built last year, one SM-G900 model, also known internally as “k3g,” initially came with such a display. Samsung later dropped its plans to use the WQHD display but not before leaks revealed Samsung’s plans. It appears that WQHD display production challenges forced Samsung’s hand as it was not sure that it could produce sufficient quantities to meet the expected demand.
Now jump forward to today. Samsung is still working on its premium Galaxy S5 device. Codenamed KQ (the Galaxy S5 was codenamed K), it is now reportedly at “a middle- to late- phase of development.” At least one prototype not only sports the WQHD display but also a new Samsung Exynos 5430 processor and an Intel LTE modem. It could be headed to Europe.
Based on a 20nm manufacturing process, the Samsung Exynos 5430 is reportedly an evolution of the Exynos 5422. Core speeds are expected to be bumped up to 2.1GHz for the Cortex-A15 ones and 1.5GHz on the Cortex-A7 ones and the Mali GPU should also see a clock speed bump to 600MHz. It would also be paired with an Intel XMM7260 Category 6 (300Mbps) LTE modem. If so, this would be a huge win for Intel which has struggled against Qualcomm in the mobile space.
So where does this leave the SM-G906S which sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor? SamMobile postulates that Samsung could have two variants in the works, the KQ with the Exynos processor and the SM-G906x with the Snapdragon one with each headed to different markets. It would not be the first time that Samsung has adopted such a strategy.
With the Samsung KQ still in development, we may not see it until late 2014 or early 2015.
Source : SamMobile