Samsung's Galaxy S5 'will have 2K display, fingerprint scanner'
Leaked screenshots suggest Samsung will stick with convention for the naming of its next flagship.
According to @evleaks, a Twitter leaker with a good track record of revealing details of unreleased smartphones, Samsung will stick with the nomenclature that's worked for past flagships, with the latest to be called the Galaxy S5.
Although it would make sense for Samsung to continue with tradition, the company doesn't confirm the name until the device is released.
Samsung has been tipped to be equipping the S5 with a QHD 2K display, which appears to be borne out by two images posted by evleaks of the S5's APK files. The file names may also point to a 3D viewer and QHD display — '3DTourViewer_WQHD_K.apk' — on the device as well as a possible fingerprint scanner, suggested by the 'FingerprintService.apk' file name. The reference to WQHD suggests the S5 a screen resolution of 2560x1440 pixels.
The resolution is consistent with benchmarks for a mystery Samsung device that surfaced late last year and were thought to be for the Galaxy S5.
Samsung has also been rumoured to be building an eye-scanner, with execs teasing the possibility by telling Bloomberg recently that people were fascinated by the iris recognition technology. But the APK file could mean Samsung, like Apple, is going with fingerprints as its biometric of choice after all.
Samsung was initially thought to be releasing the Galaxy S5 at the Mobile World Congress trade show next month but seemed to deny that afterwards, with an exec claiming the launch will happen at its own event in March or April — the period in which Samsung has released previous versions of the Galaxy S.
Earlier screenshots supposedly of the Galaxy S5 also leaked by @evleaks pointed to the S5 getting a Windows-like Magazine UX make-over in place of its current TouchWiz UI. However, that may not see the light of day if a report this week by Re/code is correct.
Samsung has reportedly acquiesced to Google's request to fall in line with its vision for Android and ditch or modify Magazine UX that featured on Galaxy NotePro, which reviewers noted looked more like Windows than the Android KitKat OS it is actually running on.