Pantech bezel-less 5-inch smartphone with Snapdragon 600
Although it’s not exactly a household name in the global mobile industry, Pantech is extremely popular in South Korea. In fact, believe it or not, Pantech has been the second best-selling handset maker in its homeland in 2012, behind Samsung, but ahead of LG, Apple and all the others.
But why not believe it, when the company has sensational phones like the Vega No.6 or Vega R3 in its portfolio? Also, if we are to trust existing rumors, Pantech has great plans for the future – a mystery IM-A870 device targeted against Samsung’s Galaxy S4.
The near future, that is, because apparently the company’s next flagship will go on sale as soon as the end of April. Based on the model number, this is surely set to up the ante of the Vega No.6, aka the IM-A860.
Details on the exact specs are still slim, but if Korean website ET News is to be trusted (and something tells me it is), the A870 will come with a 5-inch bezel-less display, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
Hold on, bezel-less display? As in truly borderless and not just the kind of edge-to-edge display that Motorola and Intel teased last year, but failed to deliver after all? That would be huge! I mean, we’ve all been waiting and dreaming and craving for something like that for God knows how long, only to hear from everyone that it’s virtually impossible to design a functional phone that’s all screen.
And Pantech could make that happen? Sign me up for a dozen of these already! Unless, you know, the report is not legit or the whole thing will turn out to be just a cheap marketing ploy.
Also, even if the IM-A870 does happen to be the world’s first true bezel-less phone, the issue of potential limited availability remains in place. But hey, let’s not be negative and hope Pantech will be looking to go for gold worldwide for a change.
Back to the 5-incher’s rumored spec sheet for a second, I have to mention that, after doing some digging, I’ve discovered an older AnTuTu benchmark of the IM-A870L, the version for Korea’s LG U+. This “confirms” there will be on-board Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, but shows a 1.7 GHz S4 Pro CPU inside and not a Snapdragon 600.
That makes the IM-A870 score lower than Samsung’s GS4, although 24,000 points is still rather zippy. For comparison, the HTC One scored about as much in our AnTuTu test, while Sony’s Xperia Z lagged behind, at a little over 20,000 points.
Now how could you not get excited about Pantech’s rumored next spearhead? No, seriously, I want to know how I can make the wait bearable, because I feel like I’m going to explode!
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