In the early days of Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ rumors, it was reported that Samsung was going to launch a mini variant of its flagships. However, this didn’t pan out as there was no sign of it on February 25 when the pair got announced at the MWC 2018.
While we assumed this was the end of any Galaxy S9 mini rumors, a new Geekbench listing has popped up to ignite speculation all over again. It was first spotted by Twitter tipster MMDDJ who claims the smartphone is being tested in China. It bears the model number SM-G8750, but that’s not a big clue since it doesn’t match any recent handsets.
SamMobile points out that the Galaxy S5 Active had the model number SM-G870A, but more recent editions go by SM-G89xA. Plus, the phone listed on Geekbench has fairly mid-range specs and the Active series typically boast of high-end features.
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As for what those specifications are, the alleged Galaxy S9 mini boasts of a 1.84GHz octa-core Snapdragon 660 processor, 4GB of RAM, and Android 8.0 Oreo. The OS combined with the fact that it was tested on April 2 indicate that this is definitely a device which is undergoing active testing.
There’s no guarantee that this is indeed a smaller version of the Galaxy S9, since it could easily be one of many mid-range phones which Samsung sells. The last time the brand had launched a mini variant of its flagship smartphone was in June 2014 with the Galaxy S5 mini.
If there really is a Galaxy S9 mini, Samsung might go for a 5-inch screen with the same Infinity Display design. This is significantly smaller than the Galaxy S9’s 5.8-inch and the Galaxy S9+’ 6.2-inch panels. It’ll hopefully be much cheaper too, in order to better appeal to the handset’s target audience.