Samsung Project KQ tips at premium variant of Galaxy S5 with Quad HD display and Exynos 5430 processor with Intel LTE modem

There have been rumors regarding a premium variant of the Galaxy S5, Samsung’s current flagship phone well ahead of the phone’s launch. Latest reports suggest that such a smartphone is in the advanced phase of development. A report from SamMobile claims that the project is dubbed as Project KQ, while internally the S5 is referred to as Project K. However, it suggests that there is some delay in the development process owing to shortage in the component supply.

According to the report, the Project KQ includes a 5.2-inch 2K Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels resolution) display. But, there is no information if it will be the Super AMOLED panel as in the other Samsung phones. Adhering to Samsung’s tradition, the Project KQ is all set to be launched in different variants with each one equipped with a different chipset.

It is claimed that the South Korea exclusive model will be powered by Samsung’s latest chipset – Exynos 5430 Octa featuring a 2.1GHz Cortex-A15 quad-core processor and a 1.5GHz Cortex-A7 quad-core processor along with 600MHz ARM Mali GPU. The display controller of Exynos 5430 is completely redesigned so as to handle the 2K screen.

It also includes a HEVC video decoder that enable 8K UHD (8192 x 4320 pixels) video playback along with a dedicated audio co-processor named Samsung Seiren, that can take charge of encoding and decoding.

Coming to international model of the smartphone, it is said that for the first time the Exynos processor will make use of an Intel LTE modem (XMM7620) for connectivity. It will support speeds of up to 300Mbit/s downlink and 150Mbit/s uplink. The Korean model will include a Samsung LTE modem codenamed Shannon 300.

At this point of time, there is no clear information on the particulars of the U.S. or global variant of Project KQ and on whether it will include a Snapdragon 805 chipset or not. Interestingly, Samsung is believed to have developed ten variants of the Galaxy S5 before the device entered production and that two of them were packing QHD displays, confirming the rumors that came before the announcement of the phone at the MWC 2014.

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