Pantech Vega LTE-A goes official: 5.6-inch Full HD screen, S

Right on schedule, Pantech has unveiled the Vega LTE-A, which is the company’s third top-notch smartphone to see daylight in 2013, following on the footsteps of the massive Vega No 6 and the very sleek-looking Vega Iron.

For the time being, we still have no idea how much this new monster will cost, but it will apparently land on Korea’s SK Telecom sometime around mid-August. Meanwhile, there’s almost no chance the Vega LTE-A will escape the South Korean borders, which is a terrible shame given the thing looks like fierce competition for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and LG G2.

For one thing, it comes with a function that the G2 has been confirmed to skip just 24 hours ago – a built-in fingerprint scanner. Pretty neat, but that’s not the only ace up Vega LTE-A’s sleeve. Far from it actually, with the “phablet” packing quad-core Snapdragon 800 heat and boasting a 5.6-inch IPS panel with Full HD resolution.

You also get an almost standard by now 2 GB of RAM, plus a 13 MP camera slapped on the back, a 2 MP snapper on the front and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on the software side of things. The 3,100 mAh battery sounds pretty hot too, though if you think about it it’s the same size as the ticker inside the Galaxy Note 2.

And Sammy’s giant only sports a 720p panel, so on the whole the Pantech Vega LTE-A might suffer in the autonomy department. Other known features of the newly unveiled 5.6-incher include LTE-Advanced support (duh) and two storage options: 16 or 32 GB.

Measuring a far from jaw-dropping 10.5 mm in thickness, the Vega LTE-A weighs in at just 178 grams, meaning it’s ever so slightly skinnier than the GNote 2. It’s also narrower, at 78.3 mm, but a tad taller (153.4 vs. 151.1 mm). Oh, how I wish I was living in Korea by now…