The Celox, Samsung’s 4G LTE version of its Galaxy S2, while superficially resembling the S2 differs in many ways, represents a serious beefing up of the spec for the Galaxy family. And this may be a problem for Apple, currently gestating the iPhone 5 and with existing models about a generation behind current Android super-phones, because it looks like the competition is about to get a lot tougher.

Screens

The Samsung Celox will sport a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 800 x 480.

It has been reported that in its latest incarnation Apple will slightly increase the screen size from 3.5 inches to 3.7 inches and will be an edge-to-edge display, occupying the entire face of the phone. It is unlikely that Apple will opt for a 4-inch plus display as the increase in size will result in a drop in pixels-per-inch. Anything over 300 ppi is considered retina display. A 3.7 inch display has a ppi of 312 — a drop of 13 ppi from the iPhone 4′s 326 ppi. So even though most Android phones feature 4.3 inch displays Apple is likely to remain conservative.

Cameras

The Celox is rumoured to come with an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera.

Speculation suggests that the iPhone 5 will feature an 8MP camera with dual-LED flash.

Apple has already ordered 90% of its 8MP camera sensors from OmniVision. However, the Celox’s Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 processor has the capability to support a 16MP camera and the ability to capture and display 1080p stereoscopic 3D video or 8 megapixel stereoscopic still images. Thus, there is greater room for optimization in Samsung’s offering.

Processors

The Samsung Celox is expected to be powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 processor.

Rumors state that the iPhone 5 will be powered by the A5 dual-core processor, which currently powers its iPad 2.

While the A5 dual-core chipset can challenge the Galaxy S2 and other NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip-based Android phones, it cannot match the power of dual-core 1.5GHz chip-sets. If Apple wishes to take on the expected new swathe of 1.5MHz Androids they may have to delay the launch of the iPhone 5 until later in the year when the A6 chips may be available.

Networking

Celox offers 800MHz LTE support, and thus it will possibly be targeted at Europe (US carriers support 700MHz). However it’s likely that a different version of the Celox will be launched in the United States. The Samsung Celox’s features are similar to those rumoured for the Hercules which is expected to arrive soon on the T-Mobile network.

Most of all it is surmised that Apple will not launch a 4G LTE compatible iPhone and that will give a straight run to Celox if it winds its way to the U.S. Analysts have forecast that Apple will forego LTE functionality in the iPhone 5 due to the limitation of the Qualcomm LTE chip-set which failed to achieve sufficient yields.

Other info

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Google has launched its belated Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS which will enable it to make a stronger push into the tablet market where Android is currently running on 6 million devices (compared to iOS running on 25 million).

Android 4.0 is clearly designed to unify the Android experience and while there are plenty of details lacking, we know that Ice Cream Sandwich has:

• New User Interface taking a cue from the Honeycomb tablet operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich sports a sleek futuristic design that more closely aligns the phone and slate OSes.
• Hardware acceleration for smoother-running apps and greater energy efficiency saving battery life.
  
• All hardware buttons removed in favor of software buttons, allowing more universal application design on both tablet and smartphone devices.
• Roboto font, which was specifically developed for smartphones and tablets.
• Flexible widgets that can be resized by users and which are located in a new element of the OS’s navigation.
• Home Screen folders You can group apps or shortcuts together and, as with iOS, you can do this just by dragging icons on top of one another.
• Smarter folders, including the ability to ‘layer’ foldering.
• Favorites tray giving quick access favorite apps, folders, and links.
• Screenshot functionality. By holding down the power and volume button, you can take a shot of everything on your screen.
• Revamped notifications, including new user customization options and quick dismissal.
• Improved copy/paste by allowing users to move and manipulate entire blocks of selected text.
• Better keyboard It’s faster, smoother, more accurate, and best of all, better at correction. There’s in-line spell check and the ability to install third-party dictionaries.
• Enhanced talk-to-text features by improving accuracy, speeding up speech-to-text interpretation, and making the controls for speech-based typing more prominent.
• New browser that has tabs, lets you import your Chrome bookmarks, and lets you automatically load the desktop version of a site.
• Integrated Gmail and Google Calendar, whether you want them or not, with more intuitive controls and deeper in-OS functionality.
• Gmail UI improvementsincluding off-line search, a two-line preview, and gesture support for swiping between conversations and action bar for composing a message, searching, and accessing labels.
• Google+ integration, giving users quick access to Hangouts and other new social functions from Google.
• People app taking care of all your social networking needs, the updated People app will be pull in all status updates, photos, videos which should also include all your Google+ activity.
• Multi-tasking has been given a boost and with ICS it’s easier to see which apps you’ve been using recently. If you decide you’re done with using one, you can easily flick it away to close.
• Data usage tracking and controls that let users see where their data usage is coming from.
• Improved camera functionalitywith image stabilization, autofocus, panorama photo features, automatic face detection, and on-the-go photo editing and enhancement. Also Camera has no shutter lag, continuous focus, zoom while recording, panorama photos, time lapse settings, and 1080p recording.
• “Android Beam,” which lets users transmit YouTube videos, websites, apps, and more by touching their phone to another NFC-equipped device.
• Improved the contact list through the “People App,” which gives users the option to share, hide, and prioritize their contact information and integrated social data.
• “Face Unlock,” which lets users unlock their phone just by looking at the front-facing camera.
• Voice Input features including the ability to read out text for your mobile to input. This is a similar, if less advanced, version of Siri.
• “Visual Voicemail” service that translates your voicemails into text so you don’t need to listen to them to get the message. Coupled with auto-text response for when you are busy and can’t answer a call.
• WiFi direct which enables you to connect directly to peer WiFi devices without the need for tethering.
• on-device data encryption allowing connections to Microsoft Exchange Servers for access to corporate e-mail, calendars, contacts and more, eben if those Exchange Servers have a device-encryption IT policy enabled.
• Revamped calendar UI that makes navigating calendar pages easier and more intuitive. And a new pinch-to-zoom feature makes precise zooming in on calendar items much simpler.

So plenty to look forward to there. But is there anything missing? Were you hoping for anything that isn’t on this list.

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