(gigaom.com) -- Although the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is one of the hottest selling Android phones currently, its size is just too much for some hands to take. So it makes perfect sense for Samsung to create a smaller version dubbed the “mini”. The company did the same with it’s Galaxy S 3 last year. It’s likely Samsung will introduce a Galaxy S 4 Mini at a planned June event in London, but we now have a good idea of what to expect.
Once again, mobile device benchmarking applications provide the details: All About Samsung, a German enthusiast blog, caught sight of the likely Galaxy S 4 Mini specifications on Wednesday. If you were expecting the same phone in a smaller version, plan to be surprised because Samsung has cut back in some areas as compared to its flagship Galaxy S 4.
Instead of using Samsung’s latest Exynos silicon, the tested Galaxy S 4 Mini uses a dual-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S400 chip and Adreno 305 graphics. In comparison, the Galaxy S 4 uses a higher-end 1.9 GHz quad-core Snapdragon S600 processor. And although the benchmarks don’t indicate it, I wouldn’t expect the Mini to offer all of the same gesture functions found in its big brother, based on that chipset: The required screen digitizer would also add to the cost.
The Mini also looks to sacrifice display resolution — in a big way. I would have expected a drop from 1920 x 1080 to 1280 x 720 resolution, but the tested Mini uses an older qHD res of 960 x 540. Still, on an expected 4.3-inch display, that works out to a relatively crisp 240 pixels per inch.
The benchmarks also indicate an 8 megapixel rear camera, 2.1 megapixel front camera, what looks to be 1.5 GB of memory and Android 4.2.2 installed. If the benchmarks are correct — and we should know in a few weeks — the slightly smaller Galaxy S 4 Mini is less of a petite powerhouse and more of a mid-range phone that would fit in the $149 with contract price band.
But it could be perfect for folks like my wife: She pulled the SIM out of her iPhone 4S last week — she’s due for an upgrade — and popped it in the Galaxy S 4. Overall, she liked the phone, but said she couldn’t use it because it felt too big in her hands. Perhaps a Galaxy S 4 Mini would be the perfect fit?
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