Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy Grand, a dual-SIM smartphone with mid-range specifications, which is aimed mostly at emerging markets, back in December. Just a month later, the company has unveiled another model for its native South Korea, and it comes with a number of significant improvements such as a quad-core processor and 4G LTE connectivity.

Samsung has surpassed Apple as the world’s biggest buyer of semiconductors, according to Gartner. The Korean company’s hugely popular smartphones, such as the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, led to a 29% surge in chip purchases in 2012, taking its semiconductor spending past that of any other company.

Although Mozilla has stated that it won’t produce hardware for its upcoming Firefox OS, the company has teamed up with Spanish startup Geeksphone to offer a pair of developer devices. Called Keon and Peak, the devices are designed to provide developers with the opportunity to “tap the future of mobile” and get to grips with the platform that will soon be trying to steal marketshare from Android and iOS.

Verizon has today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2012, which has been its best yet in terms of subscriber growth. The company added 2.1 million new customers during the three-month period, bringing its total number of subscribers up to 98.2 million, with 58% of those customers using a smartphone.

Aside from slightly different form factors, today’s smartphones all look pretty similar; they have large displays that take up the majority of the space, and just a few physical buttons. But NEC is hoping to throw something different into the mix. The Japanese company has today unveiled the Medias W N-05E, a folding smartphone that has two 4.3-inch displays.