It's been an interesting year for Samsung, marked by ongoing court battles worldwide with Apple over similarities in its Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets to iPhone and iPad products. The South Korean firm even had to revise its Galaxy Tab 10.1 design in Germany hoping to sidestep a sales ban in that country.

Now, news is beginning to emerge that Samsung might in fact beat Apple at its own game by releasing a retina-display tablet first. According to an exclusive by BGR, trusted sources have revealed Samsung plans to launch the Galaxy Tab 11.6 tablet at the Mobile World Congress in February 2012.

The rumored tablet is said to feature a 11.6-inch retina display with an eye-popping 2560x1600 pixel resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and despite the bigger screen it will reportedly be only "barely larger" than the current Galaxy Tab 10.1 model thanks to a thinner bezel design.

It will be one of the first Samsung devices to utilize the recently announced Exynos 5250 dual core processor clocked at 2.0GHz, and taking full advantage of that hardware prowess will be Android's 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich mobile operating system. Other things like internal storage or connectivity were not detailed, but it is likely the new tablet will continue on from where the Galaxy Tab 10.1 left off in terms of features.

Two particular functions mentioned in the report included Android beam, which will enable easy synchronizing of media with the Galaxy Nexus smartphone through Near Field Communications (NFC), and a wireless docking mode that will compete with Apple TV, AirPlay and more. Samsung declined to comment on the rumors.