SEOUL, Dec 13 — The cut-price phablet will reportedly retain most of the original's main features and will be targeted at consumers in emerging markets.

The Korean tech colossus has a history of launching a flagship product and then tweaking it to make it more affordable and in the case of its smartphones, the tweak is in terms of size - hence last year's Galaxy SIII Mini and this year's Galaxy SIV Mini, which offer many of the same features as their bigger brothers but in a smaller form.

However, making a device smaller to make it more affordable may work with a smartphone, but not with a phablet. After all a small phablet is technically a phone.

According to ET News, to help build on the already remarkable sales of its latest phablet, the Galaxy Note III (10 million and counting), Samsung is building a ‘lite' edition aimed at consumers with wide - but not necessarily deep - pockets, which will use a cheaper 5.68-inch LCD display (rather than the top model's full HD Super AMOLED screen).

It will also do away with the original's 13-megapixel rear-facing camera in favour of an 8-megapixel unit. Yet, if sources are to be believed, the handset's internal workings, including its quad-core processor will remain untouched, something that will make the ‘lite' a very desirable and possibly very successful device.

ET News claims that Samsung hopes the new phablet will account for 30 per cent of its phablet sales and there's the catch. In order to make sure that it doesn't detract from its flagship line, the new device won't be that much cheaper. Just like the iPhone 5C isn't much less expensive than the flagship iPhone 5S.

The phablet's price and final specifications will be confirmed in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Samsung is expected to launch the device. — AFP-Relaxnews