Samsung Hit the Bull’s Eye with Budget Touchscreen Handset S5230
July 2, 2009 by Sushant Ghargi
Filed under Coverage, Manufacturers, Samsung
SEOUL, South Korea - Samsung's handset division has been keeping the media busy with product launches in every conceivable market segment over the last few months. Meanwhile, their sales record over the last few months have been impressive as well. With the present economic gloom, the company's high-end offerings haven't fared well in the market, but their budget touchscreen model, the S5230, has been a hit with the masses: a Chinese daily, Commercial Times, has reported that the sales of Samsung S5230 has recently crossed the one million units-a-month figure.
With a price tag of around US$229-249, the S5230 an affordable entry-level touchscreen phone in market, and with some impressive features such as the audio enhancing DNSe under its hood, the S5230 is making big waves in the entry-level music branded touchscreen segment.
Launched in April '09, competing against the likes of LG Cookie, the Samsung S5230 has been successful in the mass markets with its perfect blend of aesthetics, specifications, and spot-on pricing.
The S5230 sports Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz interface, which Samsung has been actively using in its several smartphones of the Omnia line-up and even on the latest Samsung Jet. Other goodies packed in S5230 include Gesture Lock, Photo Contact Manager and camera Smile Shot, the latter which gave it a clear advantage over the LG Cookie, its nearest competitor, price and specification-wise. However, the LG Cookie packs in a document reader, for the business consumer on budget.
Samsung Adds Four New Handsets to its Music Series
June 30, 2009 by Sushant Ghargi
Filed under Coverage, Live images, Manufacturers, Official launches, Samsung
SEOUL, South Korea- Samsung has been pro-active with its handset division, with several launches across several market segments in the last few months. In its latest announcement, the Korean giant is beefing up its entry to the mid-level segment with the launch of four new handsets in these segments.
The Samsung S6700 and C5510 are slider 3G phones targeted at the mid-end segment, while the M2310 and M2510 are entry-level music phones in clamshell and slider form-factors targeted at this market.
Specifications-wise, the S6700 is the best of the four, offering the highest-end features such as a 3 megapixel camera, GPS, dualband HSPA along with expandable memory of up to 16GB via a microSD slot.
The C5510 is not far behind carrying most of the features of the S6700, except for a lower resolution camera and a smaller screen when compared to it. The M2310 and M2510 are entry-level music centric phones sporting DNSe audio enhancing technology.
Certain images courtesy of GSMArena
Samsung Launches World’s First Solar-Powered GSM Handset
June 21, 2009 by Sushant Ghargi
Filed under Coverage, Samsung
SEOUL, South Korea- Following up on its announcement of the world's first solar-powered handset, aptly named Blue Earth, at Mobile World Congress in February 2009, Samsung has now launched the Samsung E1107 Crest Solar - the first commercially available solar-powered GSM handset, in selected markets of India, Europe, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, and Latin America.
The E1107 Crest Solar is equipped with a large solar cell on the back panel for solar charging. As per claims of Samsung, the device is capable of providing talk time of around 5-10 minutes with one hour of solar charging (measured when the phone is turned-off under the sun light of 80,000 Lux. Results subject to vary depending on circumstances). This makes it perfect for regions with low-power availability, and hence Samsung is concentrating on emerging markets with its E1107 by targetting the rural customers with an entry-level handset for its foray into solar-powered GSM handsets.
The device is equipped with dualband GSM (900/1800MHz) connectivity, and a 1.52 " CSTN display with a resolution of 128x128 pixels capable of rendering 65k colours. CSTN display technology is one of the viable alternatives to popular TFT displays but at half the cost. This has enabled Samsung to price the handset at just around US$60, making it one of the most economical entry-level GSM handsets.
Samsung Reinforces its Omnia Line-up with Four New Handsets
June 17, 2009 by Sushant Ghargi
Filed under Analysis, Coverage, Events, Live images, Manufacturers, Samsung, Videos, Windows Mobile
Latest Omnia series
SINGAPORE- Samsung announced the latest additions to its successful Omnia series at CommunicAsia 2009, an annual IT summit being held in Singapore from the 16th to the 19th of June.
Announced yesterday, Samsung added four more models to the Omnia line-up - the i8000 Omnia II, B7300 Omnia LITE, B7320 Omnia PRO, and B7610 Omnia PRO.
Another model - Samsung Jet - was unveiled at the "Samsung Unpacked" competition simulteanously held in Dubai, London, and Singapore. Samsung claims the Jet to offer the "very best in speed, power, and dominant performance".
Similar to most of their predecessors, all the Omnia series models run on Windows Mobile 6.1, while the Jet is powered by Samsung's inhouse OS with TouchWiz 2.0 interface. The Omnia i8000 and the B3700 are the only Omnia devices to be loaded with TouchWiz interface.
While the B7320 and the B7610 Omnia PRO models come equipped with full QWERTY keyboards, the i8000 and the B3700 are premium candybar phones with a new interface.
All the models are equipped with the next generation AMOLED screens except for the B7300 Omnia LITE, which continues to sport the TFT screen, inherited from its predecessor Omnia i900, the first Samsung phone under the Omnia branding.
Video: Samsung M8800 Pixon Demonstration
June 16, 2009 by Meraj Chhaya
Filed under Coverage, Events, Manufacturers, Mobile World Congress, Samsung, Software, Videos
Video hardware and software demonstration of the Samsung M8800 Pixon
(PhoneReport's article on the new Samsung M8910 Pixon 12)
