Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo release date, specs, news, update: Galaxy S5 budget variant pre-order now available

(Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Files)

There had been reports earlier of Samsung planning to soon release a variant of its last year's flagship model, dubbed the Galaxy S5 Neo, though the Korean company had never officially confirmed the speculation. Without any official announcement, the Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo went on pre-order in Europe this week and can now be pre-ordered in the Czech Republic for a price of $490.

The Galaxy S5 Neo is reportedly a slightly less powerful version of Samsung's Galaxy S5 smartphone from 2015, but is rumored to have the same size and weight as the original model, and offers most of the specifications found in the last year's flagship model.

According to reports, the Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo will reportedly come with a 5.1 inch Super AMOLED display with full HD resolution of 1290 x 1080 pixels. The Galaxy S5 budget variant will be powered by the new octa-core 64-bit Exynos 7580 processor, which was recently spotted in some benchmarks, paired with a Neo Mali-T720 GPU and 2GB RAM.

The Galaxy S5 Neo will sport a 16-megapixel rear camera, though the front-facing camera has been bumped up from 2-megapixels to 5-megapixels, putting its selfie shot quality on par with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. The Galaxy S5 variant is expected to offer 16GB of internal storage, along with support for LTE-A connectivity to allow for data connections up to four times the speed of traditional 4G LTE. Samsung is likely to pack a 2,800mAh battery in the Galaxy S5 Neo, which will be sold in single-SIM as well as dual-SIM versions.

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo are now up-and-running in the Czech Republic and the smartphone is available in black or white color options with a shipping date of July 3, though there is no word yet of a launch stateside.

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