Seoul, South Korea — Samsung said it plans a mini version of its Galaxy S5 smartphone but didn’t say when it would come to the U.S.
Last year, the company unveiled a mini version of its S4 flagship, which became available in November on the AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and U.S. Cellular networks.
HTC and LG also offer mini versions of their flagship smartphones.
Like the S4 Mini, the S5 Mini is a scaled-down version of its bigger brother but offers the same fingerprint scanner, heart-rate sensor, security features and Category 4 LTE. It will be available in Russia in July.
The S5 Mini features a 4.5-inch screen instead of 5.1-inch screen. Screen resolution is 1,280 by 720 instead of 1,920 by 1,080, and the CPU is a quad-core 1.4GHz processor instead of a 2.5GHz quad core processor. Cameras are 8 and 2.1 megapixels compared with 16 and 2 megapixels, and RAM is 1.5GB vs. 2GB. Internal memory is 16GB compared with a choice of 16GB and 32GB, and the memory card slot accommodates MicroSD cards up to 64GB instead of 128GB. The OS is Android 4.4 compared with Android 4.4.2.
Size shrinks to 5.16 inches by 2.56 inches by 0.35 inches from 5.6 by 2.87 by 0.31 inches.
The S5 Mini’s predecessor, the S4 Mini, features Category 3 LTE, 4.2-inch qHD (960 by 540) display, 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 8- and 1,-megapixel cameras, and 1.5GB RAM.