Samsung hails P520, L600, P260, S720i

Some new additions to the Samsung family are about to arrive on the mobile scene. Apart from the P520, which seems to be the jewel in the new mobile collection, the rest are meant to fill some gaps in the Samsung mid-range devices portfolio.

The most interesting one among the newcomers seems to be the Samsung P520 - the credit-card-sized touchscreen handset. It has fully touch-based interface and a QVGA touch-sensitive display, capable of showing up to 262K colors. It also sports a 3 megapixel camera and a microSD memory card slot on top of the 50 MB of internal memory. The A2DP-enabled Bluetooth is another feature of this iPhone-wannabe. The Samsung P520 also sports Wi-Fi capabilities with UMA.

Samsung P520

Having UMA at your disposal means that whenever there is an accessible Wi-Fi hotspot near you, be it your home, office or university, or simply in the street, the device can connect to it and use the connection for making and accepting calls and sending and receiving data similarly to using wireless VoIP-telephony on your GSM mobile phone. The handset would be able to switch connections between the licensed cellular radio access network and the Wi-Fi network even in the middle of a call without the user ever noticing. The most important difference from the widely known VoIP technology is that UMA is after all tightly linked to the mobile radio network, which is used for routing, authentication and billing. A call initiated using the Wi-Fi interface eventually reaches the 2G core network through the UMA network and, once the signal is transferred, it becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the cellular traffic. Subscribers using UMA can take advantage of improved indoor coverage and higher data rates, when accessing the local WLAN. Do not throw your hopes for free calls out of the window just yet, since the technology allows the UMA-enabled devices to be used as regular VoIP handsets. But it's of course up to the manufacturer to decide whether to block that functionality or not.

Samsung P260 is a slider, which also features Wi-Fi and UMA, as well as a 2 megapixel camera. Unluckily, it is able to record video in QCIF (176 x 144) resolution only. The P260 is a successor of the Samsung P200 and comes with a 262 TFT color display featuring a 240x320 pixel resolution. Samsung P260, whose availability and pricing still remain unknown, also has a USB port and Bluetooth with A2DP profile, which allows for listening to music on stereo Bluetooth headphones. It also has 25 MB internal memory, which can be extended on demand thanks to the available microSD card slot.

Samsung P260

The Samsung S720i is a low-end version of the recently announced Samsung S730i and both are pretty similar designwise. The "i" in their model designations stands for "i-mode enabled". The stylish i-moder S720i with touch sensitive keypad features a 1.3 megapixel camera, which can record video in CIF (352 x 288 pixels) resolution. It also sports a microSD memory card slot to enhance the 20MB internal memory, which is reduced significantly as opposed to the S730i. Samsung S720i comes with a 65K color TFT display with the not so impressive resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. The S720i has Bluetooth along with a USB port but the A2DP capability of the S730i is not available here. All in all, the Samsung S720i is a reasonable addition to the i-mode phone ranks, having relatively compact dimensions and quite decent capabilities. No word of availability and pricing yet.

Samsung S720i

The next Korean handset is the Samsung L600, which is notable for its violet color and stylish design. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera, a microSD memory card slot, as well as an FM radio. It comes with a 176 x 220 pixel 262K color display and Bluetooth with A2DP profile. Samsung L600 features only 15 MB of internal memory and is only capable of recording video in QCIF resolution. There is still no information regarding its availability and pricing.

Samsung L600

All phones so far come with tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and unfortunately none of them features 3G capabilities.

The last reinforcement is a remake of the already well known Samsung Z720, dubbed Mclaren Mercedes edition and made exclusively for Vodafone - it adds new flavor to the already known specs.

Samsung Z720 Mclaren Mercedes