At its Unpacked 2 event in Berlin, co-hosted with an event in New York City, Samsung (KRX:005930) unveiled the Galaxy Note 4.

The hotly anticipated fourth edition of Samsung’s genre-defining tablet comes with a quad-core 2.7 GHz Snapdragon 805 SoC that packs a 620 MHz GPU, a 5.7-inch 1440p display, a 16 megapixel rear facing camera and a 3.7 megapixel front facing shooter.  Samsung will be packing 3 GB of RAM onto the device, and giving users the option for 32 or 64 GB of internal storage. The phablet itself  comes it at 6 inches by 3.1 inches wide by 0.34 inch thick. It weighs 6.2 ounces. The phone will be runing Android 4.4.4 KitKat.

Arguably the defining feature of the Galaxy Note 4 is its high-resoluton AMOLED screen. The 1440p resolution — the highest in the industry — means the Galaxy Note 4 will be displaying things at 2,560×1,440 pixels. The Galaxy Note 4 isn’t the first device to use this ultra-high resolution, but the inclusion of that resolution with the phone effectively makes it now a gold standard.

Like Samsung’s other recently launched smartphones, the Galaxy Note 4 includes a heart-rate monitor and a fingerprint sensor.

The Galaxy Note 4 will be launched globally in October. Pricing will depend on whether the end user has the device on or off contract.

Samsung, which once enjoyed one half of a virtual duopoly in the smartphone market with Apple, needs a big hit and a lot is resting on the success of the Galaxy Note 4. Samsung’s profits have weakened upon increased competition in the space, but the Note series of phones have proven to be a reliable success with many copycats springing up since their introduction in 2011.

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In an announcement for next month’s for IFA Berlin, Samsung [KRX:005930]  has unveiled a slew of 4K UHD streaming video content partners to strengthen its 4K UHD content offerings. As of right now, if you buy a Samsung 4K TV that isn’t one of the curved displays, you won’t get any 4K content at all with your TV. However, if you do buy one of Samsung’s new curved 4K TVs then you get a $300 1TB hard drive filled with 4K content containing five movies.

In the announcement, the company announced multiple partners to help expand its 4K content library through streaming capabilities. The services include: Amazon, Netflix, maxdome, Wuaki.tv, and CHILI. From Samsung’s blog:

“The company plans to launch Amazon’s UHD VOD service in October globally, and has also expanded Netflix’s UHD VOD Service in Europe, which has been available in the U.S. and other countries since last March. Netflix kicked off its UHD streaming service with “House of Cards Season 2,” a popular US TV series, which is now available on Samsung’s UHD TV.” 

Clearly, Samsung has mistakenly beaten Amazon to its own announcement and announced Amazon’s new 4K Video on demand service which will launch in October. Amazon 4K content will likely include Amazon original shows of which there are currently about a dozen.

What will be interesting is to see whether or not Amazon will include this service as part of Amazon Prime or if Amazon Prime will get any “included” 4K content as part of the Amazon Prime video service. At this point, there are very few details that talk about how and what Amazon will do, but the good thing is that all of those early adopters of Samsung 4K TVs won’t be stranded for much longer without content. Sony’s customers are already pretty well stocked with 4K content thanks to Sony’s own library and DRM’d content delivery box. However, Samsung is working with hollywood studios and hardware providers like Western Digital to standardize 4K content delivery so that it can be safely downloaded and viewed by consumers.

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First introduced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, manufacturers are pushing curved displays as the next step in immersion.

At next month’s IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, LG plans to launch the first curved PC display — the LG 34UC97. The display has a 34 inch curved screen with an aspect ratio of 21:9 an resolution coming in at 3440×1440.

In the press release LG didn’t mention what connectivity protocol the screen would require, but did say that it would support Thunderbolt 2 for high-speed data transfers.

It’s unclear at this time what enthusiasm the market has for curved displays. While this may provide an additional immersive effect for gamers, those who need the display for professional video or photography editing might prefer a traditional “flat” panel. LG also launched a series of curved phones earlier this year, but said launch was met with a collective “meh” from the market.

LG is also planning to launch two other displays at IFA.

The 31-inch 31MU97 has a 4K capable display (4096 x 2160) and a ratio of 16:10.

LG’s 24GM77 (seen below) is targeted at gamers and has LG’s proprietary Dynamic Action Sync technology which aims to keep gameplay smooth at 1ms  with its 144 Hz refresh rate.

It should be interesting to note that LG did not try to incorporate existing technology such as Nvidia’s G-Sync which attempts to do the same thing.

Pricing and availability have yet to be announced.

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