Samsung Galaxy Note 2
One of the key contributors to Samsung's success story has been the big guy Galaxy Note. According to ongoing rumors, the company is likely to release the successor to the Galaxy Note, "Galaxy Note 2", later this year to rival Apple iPhone 5, which is also expected to arrive during this fall. Samsung

With its Galaxy range of smartphones, South Korean technology giant Samsung has had quite a success, pulling down Apple from its top spot to become the leading smartphone manufacturer in the world.

One of the key contributors to Samsung's success story has been the big guy Galaxy Note. The device has seen over seven million worldwide sales as of now, an increase of two million over the figures announced by the company in March. And now, if ongoing rumors are to be believed, Samsung is likely to release the successor to the Galaxy Note later this year to rival Apple iPhone 5, which is also expected to arrive during this fall.

The news has come from the Korean newspaper MK Business News, saying that Samsung will be releasing the Galaxy Note 2 in October with the aim of competing against Apple's next generation iPhone iteration.

Apple will most probably stick to the same timeline as last year and release its newest iPhone in fall, predict market experts. Samsung is said to be timing the launch of its latest Galaxy model to coincide with the release of the iPhone 5, up from its initial launch date at the year-end, to compete head-on with Apple, said the report.

Adding to the speculation, the report has also provided some details about the device's features, one of which is the flexible display that Samsung showcased at CES 2011. The company reportedly said that the technology was targeted for 2012 and would initially be incorporated into handsets, with tablets to follow later on.

The Korean newspaper cited industry sources, who claimed that the Galaxy Note 2 would feature an unbreakable plane (UBP) display, which is a precursor to the flexible display. The new display technology would help the device get a slimmer design that would allow more space for the baseband core chip and application processor.

According to the report, other likely features of the Galaxy Note 2 include Android Jelly Bean operating system (OS), a quad-core processor, a 12 megapixel camera, longer battery life, sturdier build than its predecessor and a larger display than the current 5.3-inch model.

While some of these features don't necessarily look like too far stretched, the claim regarding the device's display exceeding five inches needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

When it comes to competing against the iPhone 5, it would be interesting to see how Samsung packs its device to remain undisputed in the smartphone battle field, while Apple is also expected to fight hard to get back to the top.

The iPhone 5 rumor-mill was spiced up recently thanks to the leaked iPhone 5 metal backplate. It was followed by an abundance of claims from insider sources that the part was indeed real. The claimed iPhone 5 leaked parts did point to a largely familiar form factor, but the most important facet to note was the longer display, increasing the ever-present 3.5-inch measurement to the 4-inch mark, also altering the aspect ratio.

Rumors say that the features most likely to be incorporated in the upcoming iPhone model include a 4-inch Retina display, an A5X Variant chip, 1GB RAM, iOS 6, 4G LTE technology, Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, improved Siri, liquidmetal casing, an 8 megapixel (or even higher) rear camera, a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for video chatting and a much-improved battery life.

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