With the the International CES recently concluding and Mobile World Congress fast approaching, it’s not surprising to hear rumors of the next generation of Android smartphones for 2013 popping up on the Web. According to sources close to the situation, the Samsung Galaxy Note III will feature a 6.3-inch display, likely of the Super AMOLED variety with at least 1080p full HD resolution, and the newly announced Exynos 5 Octa processor that’s based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. The followup to last year’s most popular smartphone-tablet hybrid is expected to release later this year, according to The Korea Times.
If you recall, Huawei unveiled a 6.1-inch phablet, the Ascend Mate, at CES 2013. In our hands-on video with the device, we showed how it dwarfs the large 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II. A 6.3-inch Galaxy Note 3 could finally turn the unofficial “phablet” phrase into a real product category, as it would be closer to a tablet with cellular capabilities than a smartphone with an over-sized display. What would be exciting is if Samsung manages to bump the resolution beyond the FHD 1920×1080 class and up to the WQXGA 2560×1600 range, like Sharp did with its 6.1-inch IGZO prototype display.
As for the Exynos 5 Octa, Samsung announced the 8-core chipset, which includes four ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four ARM Cortex-A7 cores, at CES last week as well. The octa-core processor is actually designed to consume less power than its quad-core and dual-core predecessors, as it only activates each set of cores at a time depending on the task at hand – A15 cores for heavy-duty processing and A7 cores for less-taxing functions. Aside from the Galaxy Note3, we believe the Exynos 5 Octa will appear in other upcoming Samsung smartphones and tablets, like the Galaxy S IV and Galaxy note 10.1 2, as well.
Source: koreatimes via ibtimes