Samsung Galaxy Mega from 2013

December 12, 2021 Luisa Rey

Samsung introduced the Galaxy Mega in 2013. A device with a huge screen. Now we wouldn’t be surprised by the screen size, but that was different just under nine years ago. We introduce you to the Samsung Galaxy Mega in this edition of ‘The forgotten smartphone’.

Samsung Galaxy Mega

In 2013, according to Samsung, there was a market for a device with a large screen. Where devices usually had a screen size of roughly 4.0 – 4.8 inches at the time, that was a lot bigger with the Mega. The term phablet was born; a cross between a smartphone and a tablet. Samsung released two versions of the Galaxy Mega that year; both with a large screen. One model was the Galaxy Mega 5.8, logically with a 5.8 inch screen, the other model the Mega 6.3 with a screen size of 6.3 inches. In terms of specifications, there were still a few differences. With the ‘smaller model there was a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels, with the 6.3 inch device there was an HD resolution.

The large screen also gave the devices a number of extra options. With Multi-Window, the screen could be split in two and thus have two apps open at the same time. You could rotate the home screen to landscape mode and thanks to Air View you could get a preview of the screen with supporting apps. The Galaxy Mega was bigger than the Galaxy Note II and was actually an enlarged version of the Galaxy S4.

Both models from the Samsung Galaxy Mega series were equipped with a Snapdragon 400 chipset from Qualcomm. This was a dual-core processor with a computing power of 1.7GHz. The clock speed was slightly lower on the smaller Mega model. For photography, the Samsung smartphone was equipped with an 8 megapixel camera. This allowed filming in Full HD. On the front, the Galaxy Mega devices were equipped with a 1.9 megapixel selfie camera. The large model also had NFC and got a 3200 mAh battery. The Mega 5.8 did not have this, and had received a 2600 mAh battery from South Korea. Both models had 8GB of internal memory, which could be expanded with a memory card. The working memory of the devices was 1.5 GB.

Samsung released the Galaxy Mega in the colors white, black and purple. The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 came out in the Netherlands for an amount of 599 euros. The device appeared at about the same time as the Huawei Ascend Mate, also a large smartphone with a screen size of 6.1 inches.