Samsung's newest phone surprised us with Symbian S60 and a track wheel. Is this a new direction in smartphones for the BlackJack maker?
Because of the lack of interest in the Symbian OS among U.S. carriers, we may never see the SGH-i550 in the states, but on an all-expenses paid tour of Samsung HQ in Seoul, company reps gave us some time to try out the new S60 device. Besides the interface, the i550 is a simple slab phone, albeit with some nice touches. The phone features a trackball, reminiscent of the Sidekick and recent BlackBerry models. We found it fairly responsive, and we look forward to seeing more trackballs on Samsung phone. Perhaps on the BlackJack 2, the existence of which company reps officially confirmed, but they wouldn't give us details even a sneak peak, yet.
The phone's screen was also impressively clear, and so crisp that we asked our reps to confirm a direct lineage between Samsung's popular hi-def LCD televisions and the screen on the i550, which they did. Interestingly, on the phone's home screen sits a Google search bar, which we hadn't seen shipped on an S60 phone. We tried to pry clues about a possible Google / Samsung relationship out of our stewards, but they declined comment.
The device has real smartphone chops, too. Besides the fast HSDPA networking, running at 3.6Mbps, the phone also packs 128MB of RAM, which should smooth out the Symbian OS, as well as QuickOffice for Office document editing. A 3.2-megapixel camera around back is assisted by auto-focus and a flash. For music lovers, the phone uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, though you might want to leave some of the 150MB internal memory for applications and invest in a microSD card for media.
GPS is provided by Navigon's software, and the i550 actually marks the first mobile phone for Samsung with an embedded GPS chip. A-GPS is ready to go as soon as European carriers flick the switch on the service.
It is an interesting phone, and seems to hint at future developments for Samsung. The Google partnership is interesting to us. Though a simple search bar may not seem like a big deal, with so much buzz surrounding the possibility of a Google-branded handset, any partnership between a major manufacturer and the search giant is worthy of note.
We'd also like to see hardware elements like the trackball and the GPS chip make their way into an American smartphone, like the BlackJack. We'd even like to see Samsung make a go with the S60 in the states. We're not huge fans of the interface as shipped, but it is a versatile OS, to say the least, and plenty of add-ons are available to help business users and creative types alike.
Pricing and availability have yet to be determined, but we doubt we'll be seeing this phone in the states soon, except as an import.
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