We saw quite a few leaks surrounding the Galaxy S5 Neo last year, but the cheaper Galaxy S5 variant was never released. We recently found out that Samsung is, for some reason, planning on bringing the handset out this year, and exclusively revealed its specifications. Now, various retailers in the Czech Republic are reportedly taking pre-orders for the Galaxy S5 Neo (SM-G903F), with a price tag of $490 and an expected release date of July 3.
Winfuture.de reports that the phone is indeed powered by the Exynos 7580 chipset, a new entry in Samsung's home-grown lineup that features eight Cortex-A53 cores and the Mali-T720 GPU. That makes it less powerful than last year's top-of-the-line chipsets like the Snapdragon 8o1 and Samsung's own Exynos 5422, both of which powered the original Galaxy S5 in various regions. The display still has a Full HD resolution though, so the Exynos 7580 should still be more than sufficient for all but the most demanding tasks.
The Galaxy S5 Neo is expected to feature the same design as the Galaxy S5, with the dimpled back to make a return as well. The front-facing camera will receive an upgrade to a 5-megapixel sensor, and the phone will run on Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box (hopefully with Samsung's latest version of TouchWiz, another aspect that would help the not-so-powerful processor in keeping up.) Other specs should remain the same, with a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, a 16-megapixel rear camera, dual SIM support (in select regions), and a 2,800 mAh battery.
The Galaxy S5 Neo looks like an odd addition to Samsung's growing roster of smartphones, though it could possibly serve as a mini Galaxy S6 of sorts while leaving the Galaxy S6/S6 edge Plus to fill in the position of a larger variant. Would you be interested in buying the Galaxy S5 Neo?
