With Samsung unveiling its much-touted Galaxy Note 2 and LG expected to roll out its Optimus Vu internationally in September, the "phablet" market seems to be on an upswing, and HTC is not far behind in the phablet race. The grapevine has been abuzz with rumors of a mystery HTC device - codenamed HTC6435LVW - which is likely to be a 5-inch phablet.

LG's Optimus Vu, aka LG Intuition, debuted in Korea in March and has sold nearly 500,000 units. Samsung recently unveiled its Galaxy Note 2 at the IFA 2012 event in Berlin, and the original Note sold over 10 million units within the first nine months of its launch. The success of these devices augurs well for the phablet market's future.

In the battle of the 5-inch Android-powered phablets, check out how these three devices stack up against each other.

Display

Samsung, LG, and HTC seem to be in agreement that bigger is better. The Galaxy Note 2 sports a 5.5-inch flexible AMOLED screen with 1280x720 pixels resolution. By contrast, both the LG Intuition and HTC's rumored mystery device both sport a 5-inch display, marginally smaller than the Galaxy Note 2's. Additionally, the LG phablet has an IPS Gorilla Glass display. LG Intuiton and HTC phablet will have 1024x768 pixels and 1794x1080 pixels display resolutions, respectively.

Processor and OS

The Galaxy Note 2 features a 1.6GHz quad-core Cortex A9 processor with 2GB of RAM. The phablet will come pre-loaded with the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad-core processor will power the LG Intuition and the phablet will come pre-loaded with Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich.

Rumors suggest that the HTC phablet will feature a 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. The S4 Pro processor provides a powerful Adreno 320 GPU, which is capable of very high performance. The device is expected to come with Android ICS out of the box.

Memory and Storage

The Note 2 will pack 2GB of RAM as opposed to LG Intuition's 1GB and will be available in the 16/32/64GB versions compared to LG's 32GB on-board memory offering. Additionally, the Note 2 will have a microSD card slot, unlike the LG offering, which would increase the expandable memory by an additional 64GB. Currently, no information on the HTC phablet's memory and storage are available.

Camera and Battery

The Note 2 and LG Intuition both pack a mammoth 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. However, the Note 2 and LG Intuition feature a 1.9-megapixel and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, respectively.

The Samsung device features a powerful 3,100mAh battery, whereas the LG phablet supports up to 15 hours of talk time, courtesy its 2080mAh battery.

Details of the HTC phablet's camera and battery are currently not known.

Pricing and Release

Pricing for all three Android-powered phablets remains to be announced. However, previous leaks indicate that the LG Intuition would be priced at $199.99 (on a two-year contract). Samsung's Note 2 and the rumored HTC phablet are expected to be priced competitively.

Samsung expects the Galaxy Note 2 to be available in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East by October. On the other hand, the LG Intuition is slated for a September rollout. Details of the HTC launch are not known, but rumors suggest that a September or October launch may be in the cards.