2 jumbo phones from Samsung ahead of expected new iPhone

NEW YORK (AP) — Samsung has unveiled two new Android smartphones with jumbo screens as it seeks to recapture some of the sales lost to Apple after larger iPhones came out last year.

Samsung said today the new Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge Plus will start shipping Aug. 21. Usually, Note phones don't come out until well after Apple's new iPhone models in September.

The timing reflects a changing smartphone landscape. IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said Samsung needed to beat Apple to the punch, or risk seeing its products drowned out by all the attention on the iPhone.

The new phones from Samsung have screens measuring 5.7 inches diagonally, the same as last year's Note 4, yet both are lighter and thinner. They are comparable to Apple's 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, the larger of the two new iPhones. Samsung's Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones, which are closer in size to the regular iPhone 6, came out in April.

Samsung Electronics Co. also said its Samsung Pay mobile payment service will debut in its home country of South Korea this month. Testing in the U.S. will begin then, with a formal launch in September.

Although there's competition from Apple Pay and Google's upcoming Android Pay, Samsung is hoping its payments system will catch on with the inclusion of a technology that mimics the old-school, magnetic signals from credit-card swipes. That allows it to work with a wider range of merchants.

The new phones announced today seek to play to Samsung's strengths.