Samsung Galaxy S5 Prime and its QHD Display to Counter LG G3: Report

Various leaks about the Samsung Galaxy S5 Prime have pointed to its existence, and possible announcement in June, courtesy news reports from Korea.

Now yet another report from Korea, by The Korea Herald, suggests the same June launch of the device with some more information on the rumoured QHD display. The information is said to have been received from an anonymous Samsung source, who said the Galaxy S5 Prime could be limited edition smartphone, due to the very expensive nature of its Super AMOLED QHD display. This is also said to be the reason Samsung backed-off from including a QHD display on the Samsung Galaxy S5 (Pictures | Review).

"Samsung Electronics was supposed to use a QHD display for its Galaxy S5, but it failed due to the high cost. As the Galaxy S5 Prime will be rolled out in small quantities, it is highly likely that QHD will be adopted," said The Korea Herald's source.

The reports of QHD display have been consistent so far as almost all earlier reports have tipped that the alleged premium Galaxy S5 would sport a Quad HD display and the rear camera would come with OIS (optical image stabilisation).

The LG G3, which has been confirmed to sport a QHD display by the company, is one of the most-anticipated flagship handsets. The G3 is also officially due in Q2 2014, roughly the same time as the rumoured launch of the Galaxy S5 Prime. This fact has fuelled further speculation that Samsung is essentially launching the Galaxy S5 Prime to take on the LG G3 at launch, though its high price and limited quantities we suspect will put off customers.

LG is reportedly using LCD technology for its QHD display on the G3, instead of Super AMOLED like Samsung, and this is said to have kept the manufacturing costs low and yield feasible enough to include the in the company's flagship.

An earlier report had even claimed that a Galaxy S5 variant featuring QHD display had entered mass production.

Another leak had suggested that the Galaxy S5 'Prime' has been codenamed 'Project KQ', following the Project K codename used for the already-released Galaxy S5. The report also indicated that Samsung would be ditching Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipsets on the KQ premium variant, and would instead use an Intel processor for one of the two variants, while the other is said to sport an Exynos chipset.

Rumoured specifications claim that the alleged Galaxy S5 Prime will come with the octa-core Exynos 5430; Samsung might aim for a 2.1GHz and 1.5GHz clocking speed on the ARM Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 cores respectively, and boast of a small boost in CPU power compared to previous iterations.