Samsung unveiled several new phones today, including the first official phone designated for Cingular's new high-speed UMTS network and a high-speed Sprint competitor to the RAZR.
Cingular has pledged to launch their new high-speed network by the end of the year and the Samsung SGH-ZX10 is the first phone to be officially announced for that network. In past tests, we've gotten 200-300 Kbps speeds on Cingular's UMTS system; that's less than half the speed of Verizon and Sprint's EVDO network, but double the speed of Cingular's existing EDGE system. UMTS supports two-way video calling, though, where EVDO doesn't. Cingular says they'll quickly upgrade their UMTS network to EVDO-like speeds using the HSDPA technology in 2006, though the ZX10 isn't an HSDPA phone.
Based on our observations of the prototype model, the ZX10 is a relatively nondescript flip phone with video calling and video-on-demand functions. There's also a one megapixel camera and MP3 player built in. The phone includes a TransFlash memory card slot, speakerphone, and quad-band global roaming—although the ZX10 won't be able to use high-speed networks in other countries, only the somewhat-faster-than-dialup Class 10 EDGE network. The ZX10 will appear early next year; Samsung hasn't announced a price.
Also destined to appear early next year is the SPH-A900, a sleek, black flip phone for Sprint's new Power Vision network. It's very thin, just a touch thicker than the Motorola RAZR at 14.7 mm thick (the RAZR is 13.9 mm). The A900's specs are also generally more powerful than the RAZR's, with a 320 by 240 pixel screen, a one megapixel camera, GPS applications, VoiceSignal voice-independent speech recognition, and access to Sprint's downloadable music store. The phone also has Bluetooth. There's no memory card slot, and the phone only has 48 MB of memory, so don't expect to use it as an MP3 player. But for storing a few songs downloaded from Sprint's service, it'll be fine. (Sprint's downloadable songs are usually under 1 MB each).
The arrival of the A900 means every major carrier will have a super-thin flip phone. T-Mobile and Cingular have the RAZR, Verizon will probably soon have the Motorola V3c, and this will be the model for Sprint. The big question about the A900 is whether consumers will take to its design the same way they took to that of the RAZR, and that's a matter of personal taste, not technology.
Samsung also announced two Verizon "world phones" which will appeal to a very narrow, but affluent and somewhat desperate population: customers who aren't willing to leave Verizon, but need to roam to Europe and are willing to pay roaming rates of more than a dollar a minute. The SCH-i830 updates the existing i730 Windows smart phone by adding combined CDMA/GSM technology, which runs on Verizon's high-speed EVDO network in the US and then roams on Vodafone's GSM network overseas. Don't get too excited, though. The i830 actually removes the i730's WiFi capability, though you can still add WiFi via an SDIO card. Also, this is still a Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003 SE device, not Windows Mobile 5.0. The big advance here is the GSM roaming.
Samsung also announced the SCH-A795, a slight update to the existing A790 global roaming phone for Verizon that adds much-desired SMS messaging while roaming overseas. The company also removed the camera in the SCH-A795, which it says caused trouble for some business customers. Samsung officials said both phones should be available by year's end.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20051109/tc_zd/164878
Cingular has pledged to launch their new high-speed network by the end of the year and the Samsung SGH-ZX10 is the first phone to be officially announced for that network. In past tests, we've gotten 200-300 Kbps speeds on Cingular's UMTS system; that's less than half the speed of Verizon and Sprint's EVDO network, but double the speed of Cingular's existing EDGE system. UMTS supports two-way video calling, though, where EVDO doesn't. Cingular says they'll quickly upgrade their UMTS network to EVDO-like speeds using the HSDPA technology in 2006, though the ZX10 isn't an HSDPA phone.
Based on our observations of the prototype model, the ZX10 is a relatively nondescript flip phone with video calling and video-on-demand functions. There's also a one megapixel camera and MP3 player built in. The phone includes a TransFlash memory card slot, speakerphone, and quad-band global roaming—although the ZX10 won't be able to use high-speed networks in other countries, only the somewhat-faster-than-dialup Class 10 EDGE network. The ZX10 will appear early next year; Samsung hasn't announced a price.
Also destined to appear early next year is the SPH-A900, a sleek, black flip phone for Sprint's new Power Vision network. It's very thin, just a touch thicker than the Motorola RAZR at 14.7 mm thick (the RAZR is 13.9 mm). The A900's specs are also generally more powerful than the RAZR's, with a 320 by 240 pixel screen, a one megapixel camera, GPS applications, VoiceSignal voice-independent speech recognition, and access to Sprint's downloadable music store. The phone also has Bluetooth. There's no memory card slot, and the phone only has 48 MB of memory, so don't expect to use it as an MP3 player. But for storing a few songs downloaded from Sprint's service, it'll be fine. (Sprint's downloadable songs are usually under 1 MB each).
The arrival of the A900 means every major carrier will have a super-thin flip phone. T-Mobile and Cingular have the RAZR, Verizon will probably soon have the Motorola V3c, and this will be the model for Sprint. The big question about the A900 is whether consumers will take to its design the same way they took to that of the RAZR, and that's a matter of personal taste, not technology.
Samsung also announced two Verizon "world phones" which will appeal to a very narrow, but affluent and somewhat desperate population: customers who aren't willing to leave Verizon, but need to roam to Europe and are willing to pay roaming rates of more than a dollar a minute. The SCH-i830 updates the existing i730 Windows smart phone by adding combined CDMA/GSM technology, which runs on Verizon's high-speed EVDO network in the US and then roams on Vodafone's GSM network overseas. Don't get too excited, though. The i830 actually removes the i730's WiFi capability, though you can still add WiFi via an SDIO card. Also, this is still a Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003 SE device, not Windows Mobile 5.0. The big advance here is the GSM roaming.
Samsung also announced the SCH-A795, a slight update to the existing A790 global roaming phone for Verizon that adds much-desired SMS messaging while roaming overseas. The company also removed the camera in the SCH-A795, which it says caused trouble for some business customers. Samsung officials said both phones should be available by year's end.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20051109/tc_zd/164878
