Another manufacturer teams up with a fashion designer to create a touch screen phone, and we get our dainty digits all over the results. Is it haute couture, or prêt-à-oublier?
The Giorgio Armani Samsung phone is reminiscent of the older Samsung credit card phones, like the P300, until you turn it on. Like the older phone, the Armani phone is a small, thin slab, though the Armani phone relies on a touch interface instead of buttons. The phone comes with a clip-on wallet for protection, but unfortunately this does not provide extra power, unlike the Samsung UpStage's folder.
The Armani phone's interface is similar to the menus on the Ultra Smart F700. A three by four grid, each column and row is lit by a band of color that highlights your choice, creating a cross effect. The phone uses haptic feedback, buzzing slightly to indicate it has accepted your input, and the screen seemed very receptive to our touch. We would have liked some scrolling effects, perhaps a tracking cross that followed us as we dragged our finger from choice to choice, but the menu is still quite luscious.
The small phone doesn't skimp on features either. Besides the 2.6-inch touch screen, the phone features a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth and USB in 2.0 flavors, and A2DP for stereo music over Bluetooth headsets. EDGE will provide data networking, but at this size, that's really all we could expect, for now.
Like the LG Prada phone, the Armani is strikingly thin, but a bit more appealing as it seems to take its diminutive size to a new lower limit. It is interesting that this paradigm seems to define what manufacturers are thinking in terms of co-branded designer phones.
It can't be a coincidence that both Prada and Armani's phones are so similar, though we doubt any shenanigans went on between Samsung and LG. Instead, we think that, with the iPhone, the all-touch phone has become the luxe standard for high-end users who don't want a chunky, over-powered smartphone. Instead, these folks want a dainty, overpriced media phone.
Unfortunately, if U.S. users want one, they'll probably have to hit the import stores for now, as Samsung has announced neither U.S. availability or carrier plans. Interestingly, the starting price for the Giorgio Armani Samsung phone will be 650 Euro, which is almost twice the current price of the Prada phone, though the latter was much more expensive when it was originally released.
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