After having been caught online recently in a benchmark test and in a shipping manifest – even though Samsung has officially denied developing such a device – the Galaxy S5 model with a 2K (or QHD) display, also known as the “Galaxy S5 Prime,” has further been detailed in a new report. SamMobile has apparently been able to confirm that the handset, dubbed internally as the Samsung KQ, is in its “middle- to late- phase of development.”
The publication said that KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who was first to explain the contradicting Galaxy S5 rumors that detailed Full HD and a 2K Galaxy S5 versions by revealing Samsung is working on multiple Galaxy S5 variants, was right about Samsung’s Galaxy S5 plans, including specs for the higher-end handset version. However, it appears that Samsung encountered QHD display manufacturing issues, which may have prevented it from mass-producing enough screens to meet Galaxy S5 needs.
BGR’s own sources confirmed the manufacturing issues with Samsung’s 2K phone several months ago, but we said the vendor still had plans to launch the device this year.
SamMobile says that the phone will pack a newer Exynos 5430 system-on-chip (SoC), which would include not only 2.1GHz Cortex-A15 and 1.5GHz Cortex A7 clusters, but also a Cortex-A5 co-processor that would handle audio encoding, decoding and audio equalization – the co-processor is known internally as SEIREN.
More interestingly, the new Exynos SoC may be built on 20nm process, which would make it even more energy-efficient than predecessors. The SoC would also offer better graphics thanks to a Mali Midgard GPU clocked at 600MHz, higher than the 533MHz frequency of the GPU found in Exynos 5420 and 5422 SoCs. Also interesting is the fact that the Samsung KQ may come with an LTE modem from LTE ready to support Category 6 (300mbit/s) LTE speeds – at least the European version.
It’s not clear when the Galaxy S5 Prime would arrive or whether it’ll even be part of the Galaxy S5 family, but the phone seems a lot more real than Samsung had everyone believe.
