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4G’s been super-pricey, but superfast megabytes should start to cost you less in 2014. That’s no use if you still need a high-end phone to slurp down the data, so Samsung’s busting out a budget-looking blower called the Galaxy Core LTE.
LTE is the official name for the UK’s brand of 4G, and the Core LTE will be rocking up here in the next few months. Like the thoroughly banal Galaxy Core Advanced we saw just before Christmas, the Core LTE is nothing to write home about in the specs department.
It has a much better screen than the dismal Core Advanced. 960×540 pixels in its 4.5-inch display gives a density of 245 pixels per inch — not quite retina quality, but perfectly fine. Of more concern is that it’s a TFT, not the brighter, clearer LED type.
Inside, it borrows the Advanced’s fairly ancient 1.2GHz dual-core chip and 1GB of RAM. That shouldn’t struggle with its outdated Android 4.2.2 software, and potentially could cope with an update to the latest 4.4 KitKat, but Samsung’s not promising anything there.
A 5-megapixel camera and a pathetic 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, along with 8GB of storage expandable with microSD, round out the specs. It comes with all the usual Samsung software gubbins, including Easy Mode, S Translator and the NFC-powered sharing tool S Beam.
We’ll get our first look at the Galaxy Core LTE at Mobile World Congress next week, I expect, but Samsung hasn’t said how much this 4G-capable mobile will cost British punters. I can’t imagine it’ll be more than £200, but we’ll see. Are you on the hunt for a low-cost 4G phone this year? Dispense your judgment down in the comments.
