When the Galaxy S5 was announced back in February during Mobile World Congress, it’s safe to say that not everyone was as impressed as Samsung thought they’d be. With industry insiders saying that Samsung announced the device so much earlier than previous Galaxy S devices due to “lack of innovation” in the new model, rumors are starting to swirl that Samsung will be producing a better version of the Galaxy S5, dubbed the Prime. These rumors all focus around the all-important display resolution of 2560 x 1440. Since the Galaxy S5 was just one of those devices that was sure to make it to market, but nothing more, we’ve been hearing rumors of a version of the Galaxy S5 with a 2560 x 1440 display. It turns out that the Prime could be that device.
The rumor mill got a big boost concerning the Galaxy S5 Prime earlier this week, with news that Samsung and Intel were to be working together to create the device. Word on the street is that the Galaxy S5 Prime is to come with an Exynos 5430, of course designed by Samsung, which features four 2.1 Ghz Cortex A15 cores and then four 1.5 Ghz Cortex A7 cores to make up the big.LITTLE arrangement that ARM developed quite some time ago. Where the rumor gets a little more bizarre however, is that the Galaxy S5 Prime will apparently feature an Intel LTE modem, as oppose to Samsung’s own. Unlike most rumors, there does appear to some evidence surrounding this Galaxy S5 Prime, with the codename apparently being “KQ” and SamMobile managed to attain documents that hint very strongly that such a device does in fact, exist, even if it is in prototype form.
A lot of people are now thinking that the Galaxy S5 Prime will be launched in order to compete with LG’s upcoming G3. As the G2 last year showed us, LG’s tendency to launch later in the year can lead to better internal specs and even now, the G2 is an unsung hero of a device, with excellent battery life and some of the best processing power out there. This year’s G3 is shaping up to be even better with a rumored 2560 x 1440 display and what could very well end up being the Snapdragon 805, the latest and greatest mobile processor from Qualcomm.
Would Samsung even feel the need to compete with LG? After all, LG is hardly a major player in a lot of mobile markets. That’s true, but then there’s South Korea to think of, where LG is pretty successful themselves and last year we saw Samsung launch a faster version of the Galaxy S4 with a Snapdragon 800 at its core and much faster LTE speeds. So, the idea of Samsung launching another variant of their flagship device with better internals isn’t entirely crazy, and Intel and Samsung have been working closer on the mobile front. Last year’s Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 utilized an Intel CPU and Samsung still makes a whole bunch of laptops with Intel CPUs inside of them. Launching another version of the Galaxy S5 would also be a good way of solidifying the Galaxy S brand and would also give them another device to compete with the rumored launch of an “iPhone Air” launch.