2K Vivo Xplay 3S beats Samsung Galaxy S5 to the punch

The distinction of having the first smartphone with ultra HD resolution goes to Chinese phone-maker Vivo's Xplay 3S from this past December.

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Jessica Dolcourt

Feb. 4, 2014 11:43 a.m. PT

With all this talk of the Samsung Galaxy S5's rumored 2K HD display, it's easy to forget that a lesser-known Chinese device-maker paved the way first.

The Vivo Xplay 3S was, in fact, the first 2,560x1,440-pixel smartphone. Introduced in China in late December 2013, it houses a 6-inch LCD 2K HD display with a whopping 490-pixel density that's sure to become the norm for large, high-end phones in the near future.

The Vivo Xplay 3S has a 2K screen (pictures)

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The upmarket handset also features an Android 4.3 OS, a fingerprint scanner on the back panel, and a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. Its 5-megapixel front-facing camera complements the 13-megapixel shooter in the rear, and Vivo has added a layer to its camera app to give its front-facing shooter a few more onscreen controls than you ordinarily see.

A unibody device, the Xplay 3S comes with 32GB of onboard storage and a 3,200mAh battery. It'll work with GSM voice technology (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz), and various types of LTE: (1800/band 3; 2600/band 7; 1900/band 39; 2300/band 40; and 2600/band 38 MHz).

These specs are going to start sounding very familiar as 2014 goes on. Expect to also see smartphones with flexible displays, like the LG G Flex, and with 64-bit computing, as seen on the iPhone 5S.

Check out all my predictions for 2014 here.