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| A model promotes Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Note Edge, a "sibling" model of the company's newest flagship Galaxy Note 4, at the company's display room in Gangnam, Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics |
By Bahk Eun-ji
Samsung Electronics released Galaxy Note Edge, a sibling model of the company's latest flagship Galaxy Note 4.
SK Telecom will be the first carrier to offer the device, with KT and LG Uplus set to offer it by the middle of November.
The Note Edge has a curved edge screen in the right side, which functions independently from the main screen.
The curved display contains not only date, time and alarm information when on standby, but also some contextual controlling features, notifications like latest news, app shortcuts and stock information.
It has a 5.6-inch Quad HD Super active matrix organic light emitting diodes (Super-AMOLED) touch screen with 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution. The edge is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset with a quad-core 2.7 gigahertz (GHz) processor. It comes in two colors, charcoal black and frost white.
Samsung installed 16-megapixel rear camera and 3.7-megapixel front camera on the device, the same specs as the ones installed in the Galaxy Note 4.
The factory price of the Note Edge is 1.06 million won, according to the company.
The Note Edge, together with the Note 4, are being watched with keen interest in the market whether it can become a formidable contender for Apple's new iPhone 6. The Edge has been released three days before the release of iPhone 6's in Korea.
It remains to be seen how much impact the Samsung's latest model will have on the popularity of iPhone 6.
"In the point of users' view, user experience is the important issue when it comes to a new model. In that sense, Samsung has to find more special usability of the curved display, but the functions it has offered seems not so unique," said a tech analyst.
The launch of the Note Edge is meaningful on the other hand, as it shows how Samsung can go further with their technical capability of display, he added.
