Samsung recently unveiled the Galaxy Note 3, its flagship phablet that boasts of top of the line specifications, overshadowing the Galaxy S4, the South Korean electronic giant's flagship smartphone that was launched earlier this year.
Now, a new
report by Korean website, Naver, predicts that Samsung will also refresh its flagship smartphone offering sooner than expected.
The report suggests that Samsung is preparing to launch the Galaxy S5 smartphone in January due to disappointing
Galaxy S4 sales. It cites internal sources to inform that the Galaxy S5 is likely to be announced as early as mid-January, with a market release expected to take place in February.
To add some context,
the Galaxy S4 was announced in March 2013 and started rolling out in April. Meanwhile, the
Galaxy S III was announced in May 2013 and reached the markets in June.
The new report also sheds some light on the specifications of the alleged Galaxy S5 smartphone. It claims that the phone would be powered by a 64-bit Exynos 5430 chip and will sport a 16-megapixel camera with enhanced low-light performance and Optical Image Stabilisation. Other rumours point to dust and waterproof capabilities, and a fingerprint scanner, to directly compete with
Apple's Touch ID sensor on the
iPhone 5s.
Samsung had previously announced that its next smartphone
would be powered by a 64-bit chip, after Apple unveiled the iPhone 5s which is powered by a 64-bit processor. Samsung had also
announced a new Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) solution for its Exynos 5 Octa chips.
The move by the South Korean major was said to be the result of the criticism from competitors that claimed the Exynos 5 SoCs were not true octa-core, as they could only use four cores at once. The company now claims that with addition of the latest HMP solution for the Exynos 5 Octa, chips can maximise the benefits of the ARM big.LITTLE technology and make all cores work together.
It's also being rumoured that the alleged
Samsung Galaxy S5 would feature a metal chassis instead of the usual plastic one.