IDG News Service - Samsung Electronics today introduced the Samsung Galaxy S, an Android phone with a 4-inch screen and hinted at new content offerings.
J.K. Shin, president of Samsung's mobile communications business, unveiled the phone during his keynote speech at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas.
He called the Galaxy S a new class of smartphone and said it would be available worldwide this year.
The new class of phones must have three critical components, he said, which are a high quality screen, speed and content. In addition to the 4-inch Super Amoled screen, the Galaxy S runs a 1GHz processor, he said.
The screen is designed for optimal outdoor viewing and is efficient so it doesn't burn up battery life, said Omar Khan, senior vice president of strategy and services for Samsung America. It's thin too: The phone is 9.9 millimeters thick.
"Giant screens are not enough. Without content you'll never give consumers what they want," Shin said.
Samsung is working with Paramount Pictures to bring full-length movie downloads to the phones. It is also working with Skiff, an e-book reader provider, to deliver books, magazines and newspapers to Galaxy S users.
Galaxy S will come with Social Hub, a Samsung application that integrates social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as e-mail, calendar and instant messaging. The phone will come with clients for Yahoo and Gmail e-mail and ActiveSync for syncing with Microsoft Outlook mail.
It will run Android 2.1, the most recent version of the OS. It will have a 5-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi.
The Galaxy S may compete with HTC's HD2 phone, recently launched by T-Mobile in the U.S. and already available in Europe. In the U.S., T-Mobile loads the phones with a Blockbuster application that lets users download full-length movies to their phones. The operator said it was the first to offer such an application.
The HD2 has a 4.3-inch screen and has been praised by European users but has one downfall: It runs Windows Mobile 6.5 and users will probably not be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 7.
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