Well well, as if the existing rumors regarding the next year Korean flagship, the Galaxy S5 (or whatever it ends up being called) by Samsung weren’t enough, it now appears that the device might not actually feature a curved display, according to an article by The Korea Herald.
Samsung's Galaxy S series remains, in spite of the successes of the Galaxy Note in recent years, the company's flagship range, and although the likes of the HTC One have shown a great deal of promise this year, it is still comfortably the boss of the high-end Android market. Now, we're hearing reports of what some are already touting to be the Galaxy S5 specs, and it's fair to say, if the revelations carry any weight, that the next big thing out of South Korea will be the beastliest yet.
Apple's iPhone 5s launched back in late September alongside the so-called budget iPhone 5c, and although, as we know, first weekend sales figures were record-breaking, the trend largely continued throughout the month of October. According to a report by Counterpoint, the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 both outsold the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the month of October, with Samsung's flagship sitting in third spot, while the iPhone 5c took fourth place in the worldwide sales race.
This year, around July, it emerged that Apple could be introducing a gold, or "champagne" color configuration of its forthcoming smartphone, which we now know to be called the iPhone 5s. At the time, commentators didn't really know what to make of it, but the response, coupled with the lack of availability of the gold model due to huge sales, spoke for them. Samsung already had a stab at bringing out a gold Galaxy S4 (although this was not, the company maintains, a shameless copycat effort), but now, the South Korean outfit has gone one better by taking the wraps off the - drums please - Galaxy S4 Crystal Edition.
Samsung's Galaxy S4 is the company's current flagship, and since its release in the spring, many millions of units have been sold. With so many in the wild, it's only natural that some should develop faults, but with all the extensive testing carried out by Samsung to ensure that users aren't put in any danger, GS4 owner Richard Wygand was stunned to wake up next to his device bellowing smoke and flames.
Early benchmark results are often a good way of discovering whether a new device is being tested out, and with talk currently rife regarding Samsung's next batch of flagship smartphones, benchmarks found over at GFXBench could already show the full list of specs of the Galaxy S5. The S4 only arrived in the late spring, but with sales having not reached expectations, the Korean company is said to be working doubly hard on its eventual successor. According to the GFXBench results, the device will boast the latest and greatest Android 4.4 KitKat, a Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.5 GHz as well as a potentially jaw-dropping 2560 x 1440 resolution, or 2K HD display.
By the exceedingly high standards Samsung sets itself, the release of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 this year haven't quite lived up to standards for some people. Both devices remain two of Android's most celebrated handsets, but with competitors stepping their games up and the Korean giant seeming to coast in the eyes of many, we've already heard some big promises of next year's marquee Sammy handsets pushing the envelope. Following on from some recent nuggets of info, it looks as though there could be a vastly improved 20-megapixel camera on the way with the forthcoming Galaxy smartphones, and although the number of megapixels is just a footnote in the story of a camera, Samsung's desire to impress would suggest it's more than just bluster.
Samsung already has a reputation for launching smartphones in a variety of different colors, and it's certainly not shy about milking its handsets for all its worth be re-launching them with new paint jobs after their initial release. That's why we're not surprised in the least to see Samsung's Argentinian arm announce two new colors for the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.
The technology world never stops turning, and the smartphone portion is more fluid than most, which means it's no surprise to anyone that Samsung is hard at work making the Galaxy Gear 2 so soon after the first version hit stores alongside the third generation Galaxy Note.
Suspicion, speculation and good old fashioned controversy is never far away in the smartphone industry. Companies like Samsung, HTC and Apple are always keen to let the public know how well their hardware performs in areas that matter most to the consumer. One of the accepted methods of documenting and listing that performance is by running the hardware through a well-known benchmarking text. Futuremark - the Finnish development team behind 3DMark for Android - has announced that it suspects Samsung and HTC of cheating the benchmark tests to produce favorable results, and as such has delisted the offending handsets.
