Samsung Hercules, the 'Demi-God' approaches; Can iPhone 5 survive?

As Samsung Galaxy S2 is gaining credibility and good reviews in other parts of the world, the US market is still waiting for its arrival.

The Galaxy S2 smartphone is expected to arrive on Verizon network as the Function phone in July, and Sprint may have it in September. Even AT&T will have its hands a version called “Attain. There was no confirmation on any version going to T-Mobile, but a new rumored smartphone, known as the Samsung Hercules, has emerged out of the blue and is expected to be T-Mobile’s flagship phone.

Samsung's Hercules handset,with a rumored $350 price tag, can tick all the boxes on the super phone list, making a big impact in the crowded smartphone market.

If the speculated rumors related to Samsung Hercules are true, then the new smartphone will come with 4.5-inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED Plus display which is very similar to AT&T’s Samsung Infuse 4G as far as screens go. Motorola Droid Bionic is the other smartphone to feature a 4.5-inch HD display screen, but with a better resolution of 540 x 960 pixels. The newly announced HTC Eternity is expected to come with 4.7-inch display, which is slightly bigger for a smartphone. The iPhone 5, on the other hand, is expected to feature a display screen between 3.7-inch or 4-inch.

Samsung Hercules will also be identical in terms of 132 x 71 x 9 mm dimension similar to that of Infuse 4G.

Powering the Hercules would be a 1.5 GHz dual core Qualcomm APQ8060 processor which can make it the fastest smartphone in the market. Other smartphones that are expected to feature a 1.5 GHz dual core processor are Google’s upcoming Nexus 4G smartphone, also now known as Samsung Nexus Prime and, of course, the iPhone 5.Even the HTC Eternity launching in September features a 1.5GHz CPU processor, but it features a single core processor unlike dual core processors found in most of the recently released smartphones.

Also a Samsung smartphone usually runs the ARM Cortex processor so its choice for a Qualcomm processor is new, making Hercules its exception. The Galaxy S2 is powered by Samsung’s Exynos CPU, which is Samsung’s dual core processor but Hercules is not expected to have it.

As it comes to camera, the Hercules smartphone will have an 8-megapixel 3264×2448 pixels camera found in most of the smartphones but it can shoot 1080p 1920×1080 pixels full HD video which is not found in many smartphones. However, iPhone 5 is also expected to come with 8-megapixel camera but with dual-LED flash compared to Hercules which will have LED flash support.

With NFC support, Hercules will have rare privilege to stand alongside Google Nexus S, Google Nexus S 4G, Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Wave 578, BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 and Nokia N9 as all of them have NFC support. There are many other phones outside which also support NFC. However, the upcoming Samsung Nexus Prime will surely feature NFC and even iPhone 5 is rumored to have NFC support.

The biggest of all the surprises is that the smartphone is having category 24 HSDPA capability to exceed the max speeds of 42Mbps downstream which will make the Hercules the fastest HSDPA plus for a smartphone in the market.

Today, HSDPA speeds found in most of the smartphones are 21 Mbps or 14 Mbps. Also, the phone is expected to have hidden radios for AT&T HSDPA plus as well, which is a unique feature. The phone also will have MHL port which combines microUSB and HDMI port as one single port.

The Hercules phone may make its first appearance in August.

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