Could Samsung’s 4-inch Stratosphere 4G be a Reason of Heartache for iPhone 5 and Droid Bionic?

Samsung’s upcoming QWERTY smartphone, Stratosphere 4G, recently raised its head. According to a Pocketnow report, the smartphone will be carried by Verizon.

Previous reports said that Verizon was not going to feature the Samsung Galaxy S2 version in its network but would most probably bring in Motorola’s Droid Bionic. Now the report has been confirmed.

Droid Bionic was expected to be the first dual core phone featuring the 4G LTE support and bask in that glory for some time. However, with Stratosphere SCH-I405 round the corner, that dream could drastically end. The smartphone is expected to arrive as early as this week.

Stratosphere 4G’s rumored features include a 4-inch Super AMOLED Plus 480 x 800 pixels resolution display, pre-installed Android 2.3.4, 1GHz single-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 1800mAh battery and a 5-megapixel rear and a 1.3-megapixel front camera. 2GB of internal storage is also expected. The size of the device is yet to be made certain but is similar to Sprint’s Samsung Epic 4G that was launched in September 2010.

Apple iPhone 5’s rumored specs, in comparison, include a 768 MB RAM similar to HTC Sensation 4G, an 8 MP camera with 1080p video recording and dual-LED flash. As leaked by Sony CEO Howard Stringer previously, iPhone 5 may also carry an HD FaceTime camera similar to those shipping with the current MacBook Pro lineup. Apple, however, never reveals its RAM specification until a tear down of the device is done by tech journalists. Since iPhone 5 is expected to feature processor similar to iPad 2, the possibility of iPhone 5 running on 512 MB RAM cannot be ruled out.

The Droid Bionic has arrived with a 4.3-inch 540 x 960 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen. The smartphone runs on Android OS, v2.3.4 or Gingerbread juice and has an 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash rear camera with video recording at 1080p. A secondary VGA camera has also been provided.

The device is powered by a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, ULP GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 AP20H chipset and has 16GB of internal storage with 1GB RAM and 2GB ROM. An external card slot has also been provided that is extendable up to 32 GB.

Samsung may play it safe with the Stratosphere, providing it with lesser specifications as compared to the Droid Bionic, by making it a 4G LTE compatible device in exchange for lesser specs. Samsung may also play by what the history has unfolded previously with HTC Thunderbolt whose battery couldn’t perform as expected due to the 4G LTE network.

Elsewhere, iPhone 5 is expected to come with Apple iPad 2’s processor. The smartphone will have 1 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU Apple A5 chipset processor. But, with iPad 2 featuring a 900 MHz processor, iPhone 5 can expect to get a 1.2 GHz processor to counter the 4G LTE support to some extent for speed enhancement.

However, there are very less possibilities that the iPhone 5 will arrive with 4G LTE as the phone must be modified to fit in the big LTE chip which contrasts with Apple planning to deliver a thinner and lighter device.