5.5in Samsung Galaxy Note Neo announced: S Pen shenanigans on a budget

Remember the whispers of a budget Galaxy Note Neo device with a six-core processor? Well, it turns out they were true. Samsung Poland just made it official.

Aimed at gadgeteers who crave the big screen and stylus skills of the Galaxy Note 3, the Note Neo offers a slightly smaller 5.5in AMOLED display, with a lower 720p resolution – and the internals are considerably less beefy, too.

READ MORE: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 review

The Note Neo packs 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable memory (via microSD) and an 8MP camera beneath its faux-leather shell. Its beefy 3,100mAh battery should keep it ticking along past your bed time.

For comparison, the Note 3 has a 1080p 5.7in screen, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB RAM. We’d expect the lower pixel count the Neo’s 5.5in display to mean its somwhat less demanding to run, so there shouldn’t be much of a performance penalty.

The Note Neo will arrive in both LTE+ and 3G flavours. The LTE+ model is powered by a new hexa-core processor, consisting of two 1.7GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores. So, it’s more like a conventional dual-core processor with some help on the side.

The less powerful Cortex-A7 cores are designed to care of low-end tasks without guzzling down too much power, which should help stretch out the battery life.

The more traditional 3G variant sticks with a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, although neither model will be launched in the UK or US when it hits the rest of the world next month.

The S Pen and its Air Command tricks are of course included, and the Note Neo will be available in black, green and white.

There’s no price or release date as of yet, but we expect to find out more at Mobile World Congress – so stay tuned.

[Samsung via Engadget]

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