Samsung on Thursday looked to offer customers and shareholders a bit of reassurance by announcing intentions to launch two new high-end smartphones within the next six months. The news comes as Samsung's reported a quarterly drop in profit compared to the year-ago period, the first time that's happened in three years.

During an earnings call, senior vice president of Samsung's mobile-communications business Kim Kyun-Joon told investors that one of the handsets will feature a large screen while the other will be constructed of "new materials." The executive didn't go into any details on either of the phones although it's pretty clear which large screen phone and what building materials he is referring to.

The large screen smartphone in question is almost without a doubt the Galaxy Note 4, a handset rumored to include a 5.7-inch display operating at 1,440 x 2,560 and powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chip clocked at 2.7GHz. Most expect Samsung to debut the Note 4 at an Unpacked Event just ahead of the annual IFA trade show in Berlin come early September.

Both end-users and those in tech media circles have been calling for Samsung to ditch the plastic materials used to construct their smartphones for a premium building material like aluminum. It's a move that has paid dividends for companies like Apple and HTC and if speculation proves accurate, we may see Samsung do just that in the near future.

Rumors suggest this aluminum handset could arrive in the form of the Galaxy Alpha as early as this coming Monday. Initial chatter suggested this phone would be a high-end device that would upstage the recently launched Galaxy S5 but more recent rumblings indicate we could be looking at a mid-range device with a 720p display.