The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is the subject of gossip following leaked information that, if true, affirms the release of the new phablet by the second half of this year, mostly by September in-line with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3's release, last year.

It is worth noting that, Samsung's Galaxy Note was first introduced in 2011 and the company is the pioneer in conceptualizing 'phablets'. A phablet's display is too big to be called as a smartphone but it is not big enough to be a tablet. But the phablets quickly became a house-hold name and clearly a hot favorite among users.

Readers who are planning on buying the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or waiting for the release of Samsung Galaxy Note 4, here is the specification and price comparison.

Display, Design & Exterior

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 features a faux leather case design which was much appreciated and highly purchased. Keeping up with the demand, Samsung carried over the case design to its flagship Samsung Galaxy S5.

Yoon Han-kil, Samsung's senior vice president said that the company will release a new Galaxy Note handset with a "new form factor" in the second half of this year. However, he didn't say whether it will sport a flexible or curved form factor. According to the leaked concept image, the Galaxy Note 4 has a metal body with rubber-like material as its back panel.

In addition, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will feature a YOUM flexible OLED display technology. According to reports, a three-sided YOUM display is a possibility; that translates to, having the left and right sides of the display bent in such a way that users will be able to view important notifications on those sides.

Other than this, the Note 4 will sport the same 5.7 inches screen like Note 3. In addition, Note 4 is expected to come with a 2K resolution support (2560×1440 pixels) when compared to the full HD resolution of Note 3.

Hardware, Software & Internal Storage

The Galaxy Note 3 is powered by 3 different processor/chipset combination; Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, quad-core Krait 400 processor clocked at 2.3 GHz (or) quad-core Cortex-A15 chipset clocked at 1.9 GHz (or) quad-core Cortex-A7 chipset clocked at 1.3 GHz with 3GB of RAM and 16/32/64 GB internal storage. Whereas the Note 4 will be equipped with a much superior octa-core 64-bit processor along with a whopping 4 GB of RAM and up to 128 GB of internal storage.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is expected to run on Android 4.5 Lollipop, while Note 3 runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, which is upgradable to Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

Battery

The Galaxy note 3 houses a Li-Ion 3200 mAh battery unit which provides up to 21 hours of 3G talk-time and 420 hours of 3G stand-by time. On the other hand, the Galaxy Note 4 is expected to house a slightly better 3600 to 3800 mAh battery unit.

Camera

The Galaxy Note 3 comes with a 13MP rear facing camera and 2K recording. While the Galaxy Note 4 is expected to sport 20.7 MP camera. In addition, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will support Optical Image Stabilization. If rumors were true, the Note 4 camera would support 4K recording capabilities.

Price

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (N900 octa-core 16GB variant) is priced at AU$699.95, while the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is expected to be priced under US$800, which roughly translates to AU$860 in Australia.