Alleged Samsung Galaxy S9 mini now listed on AnTuTu

Speculations are rife that Samsung is working on a mini variant of its Galaxy S9 flagship. A couple of days ago, a smartphone with model number SM-G8850 was spotted on TENAA. The same device has now made its way to AnTuTu benchmarking site, meaning it will be unveiled soon. The AnTuTu listing has also revealed some key specs of the alleged Samsung Galaxy S9 mini.

According to the AnTuTu listing, the smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor coupled with an Adreno 512 GPU. There is 4GB RAM and the onboard storage is 64GB. The Samsung SM-G8850 is also listed with Android 8.0 Oreo and a display with a Full HD+ resolution of 2,280×1,080 pixels. The screen resolution of the display suggests that the smartphone may come with an S-AMOLED display with the aspect ratio of 18.5:9.

The alleged Galaxy S9 mini has achieved an average benchmarking score of 136,483 on AnTuTu. When it comes to other specs, the TENAA listing has revealed that the smartphones will sport a 5.8-inch QHD+ S-AMOLED display and a 3,000mAh battery.

We also came across some images of the handset, which showed it would have a vertically arranged dual rear camera setup much like the iPhone X, and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner.

It's been a long time since Samsung last launched a mini variant of its flagship Galaxy S series phones. After the Galaxy S5 mini, the company decided to ditch the trend. If the rumors pan out, we will see a mini variant after four years.

Not only Samsung, other manufacturers including Sony (and HTC at one point of time) come up with 'mini' versions of their flagships. The mini versions usually come with similar hardware specs to their larger siblings, but a few differences in the display size, screen resolution, and battery capacity.

While there's no official word on this, we can probably guess why the South Korean tech giant would want to launch a mini variant of the Galaxy S9.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ unboxing and quick look

Samsung's Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are really impressive flagships, but not everyone has the means to purchase the smartphones. Hence, the company has presumably decided to come up with a cheaper option that will carry some specifications of the Galaxy S9.