UPDATED 07:49 EDT / APRIL 07 2014

Samsung’s newest toys: The Galaxy S5 mini and Note 4

small__8077711804Samsung unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S5 back in February. Following this announcement, U.S., carriers began pre-selling the device from the end of March, with the phones expected to be shipped from April 8.

The Galaxy S5 is bigger than its predecessor and sports a more rectangular look. Fortunately, the shiny plastic casing has been discarded for a rubberized, matted, and dimpled back casing. Though it’s still made up of plastic, at least now it has a more ‘grippable’ feel. As for its tech specs, the Galaxy S5 features a 5.1-inch 1080×1920 SuperAMOLED display, a 16MP rear camera capable of taking photos in less than a second, wireless connections such as 802.11 ac 2×2 MIMO and 4G LTE Advance, and a 2,800 mAh battery.

The features mentioned above are quite impressive already, but what makes the Galaxy S5 stands out is the fingerprint scanner embedded in the Home button, a heart rate sensor mounted adjacent to the LED flash at the back, an ‘Emergency Mode’ to help users in times of trouble, and its water-and dust-proof abilities that make it far more durable than previous Galaxy phones.

The specs on the Galaxy S5 looks amazing, but the South Korean giant is said to have a few more tricks up its sleeves to keep its fans happy.

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Galaxy S5 mini

As per tradition, Samsung is said to be releasing a mini version of its flagship device, which will cost less than the original version. The Galaxy S5 mini hasn’t been revealed yet, but new rumors state the device will feature a 4.5” Super AMOLED display with 720p resolution, run Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, and be powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor. Other features include a 8MP rear camera, a 2MP front-facing camera, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB storage, an IR blaster, and a 2,100 mAh battery.

In many ways its very similar to the Galaxy S4 mini released last year, albeit with some upgrades. The S5 mini is also water- and dust-proof, but we don’t know yet if it will have a fingerprint sensor and a heart rate sensor like its bigger brother.

Galaxy Note 4

 

small__10051014984Later this year, Samsung is expected to release the Galaxy Note 4, and leaks have surfaced stating it will be the first Samsung smartphone to feature a “2K” display with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels.

Other features of the Galaxy Note 4 are a 20.7MP rear camera with 4K video-recording capability, an improved battery somewhere between 3600mAh and 3800mAh, with the phone powered by either a Samsung-made Exynos processor with 6-cores, or a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU. It’ll also come with 4GB of RAM, run on Android 4.5 and feature 128GB of internal memory. The Galaxy Note 4 will also be water-and dust-proof, and would probably also have a fingerprint sensor and a heart rate sensor.

The device is expected to be unveiled at the IFA Berlin in September, or just a few days before that.

photo credit: krrisd via photopin cc; photo credit: Janitors via photopin cc

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