Similar to how anything you want to sell in America need to go through the FCC, if you want to ship a product that’s certified to work correctly with Bluetooth peripherals, you need to make sure it passes through the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group).
Now unlike an FCC document, where often provides you with a wealth of information about a device, the Bluetooth SIG is much more secretive, which is why I’m going to talk about two new devices in one article instead giving each of their their own time to shine.
First up is the EK-GN120. Sounds boring, right? Here’s the thing, the original Galaxy Camera, the AT&T variant, has the model number EK-GC100. That leads the Dutch website TechTastic to believe that the EK-GN120 is a successor to the original Galaxy Camera.
This shouldn’t be surprising to any of you. Everyone knows that Samsung likes to refresh their devices on a yearly cycle. The first Galaxy Camera was unveiled in August 2012 at IFA in Berlin along with the Note II. If I had to guess as to when we’ll see the Galaxy Camera II, I’d say at IFA 2013, which this year takes place in early September.
Next is the LG-F320S. The Droid Guy thinks this device is the LG Optimus G2. His evidence are two AnTuTu benchmarks which he doesn’t link to and I can’t find, one for the LG-F320K, the other for the LG-F320L. The K is the G2 variant for the Korean operator KT, the L is the G2 variant for the Korean operator LG U+, and the S variant is obviously for SK Telecom.
Is LG going to announce a successor to the G? Probably. Will it pack a Snapdragon 800? Why wouldn’t it? LG was the first company to announce a dual core phone, first to announce a quad core phone, so why not be the first to demo a device with Qualcomm’s best processor to date?
When are we going to see the G2 get formally announced? The G wasn’t unveiled at an industry event, it was just a press release dropped on a random day in September 2012. That makes it hard for me to predict when exactly it’ll show up this year, but I’d say Q3 is the safe answer.
Update: According to the FCC, the Verizon variant of the Galaxy Camera is called the EK-GC120. The documents with that model number were published in November 2012. The Bluetooth SIG page for the EK-GN120 went up earlier this week. Despite this new information, I’m still confident that we’ll see a new Galaxy Camera this year, and again, it’ll likely appear at IFA 2013 in Berlin.
