At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Samsung has unveiled two high-speed additions to its portfolio of GSM based handsets in the SGH-ZX10 and SGH-ZX20. Both clamshells, the handsets place an emphasis on speed as their selling points, but also incorporate a number of other high-end features.
Expected to be North America's first commercially available UMTS phone, the SGH-ZX10 is slated for availability in January 2006 and is to feature quad-band GSM and dual-band WCDMA (UMTS) connectivity. Equipped with a microSD card slot for memory expansion in addition to its 50 MB of onboard memory, the handset boasts a 1.3 Megapixel camera with the ability to record up to one hour of video.
Also supporting streaming audio and video, the SGH-ZX10 integrates a 262K colour internal display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and an external, monochrome display, as well as support for Java; SMS, MMS and instant messaging serviecs including AOL, ICQ and Yahoo!; and speakerphone functionality.
The SGH-ZX20, meanwhile, is due out somewhat later in the second quarter of 2006 with Samsung aiming for it to become the world's first commercially available HSDPA handset. HSDPA is the successor to UMTS/WCDMA on the GSM evolutionary tree, offering up to seven times the maximum transfer rate of current 3G handsets based on UMTS/WCDMA, with the SGH-ZX20 supporting a veritable acronym smorgasboard including dual-band HSDPA/UMTS and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE.
Similar to the SGH-ZX10, the SGH-ZX20 integrates a 1.3 Megapixel with flash and supports audio and video streaming, but is also equipped with a media player to play back offline media in MPEG4, RealOne, H.263, MP3 and AAC formats. Also, the SGH-ZX20 is fitted with Bluetooth 2.0, a microSD card expansion slot and speakerphone functionality, and features the same internal display as the SGH-ZX10 as well as its support for SMS, MMS and instant messaging services of various kinds.
Information concerning the expected pricing of the Samsung SGH-ZX10 and SGH-ZX20 handsets was not disclosed.
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