Samsung just got busy with a trio of MP3, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+, WMA, and WMDRM supporting musicphones: the dual-sliding
SGH-i450, slim
SGH-F330 with HSDPA, and
SGH-F210 swivel stick. Most impressive is the €360/$508 Symbian i450 with Touch Wheel music navigation pictured above. Slide 'er up and you're holding an S60 3rd Edition smartphone with 3.6Mbps HSDPA data beneath a 2.4-inch LCD. Slide 'er down to expose metallic speakers with a B&O ICEpower amplifier and Samsung music UI for controlling the tunes stored in its 35MB of internal memory or up to 4GB on microSD expansion. Sure, Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio, 3.5-mm headphone jack, and FM radio as well. The €260/$367 F330 features the physical music controls of the
F300 while packing 3.6Mbp HSDPA, a 2 megapixel camera, and up to 2GB of microSD expansion in a slider measuring just 13.5-mm thin. The F210 then, is a GSM version of the
U470 already nabbed by Verizon as the
Juke. It offers up to 20-hours of audio playback from the included 1GB storage or microSD expansion -- we hear it makes phone calls too. Sorry US Americans, all these phones are tri-band GSM and set to launch around Europe starting this month.
posted Oct 10th 2007 4:23AM
I wish I never left T-Mobile and the GSM network....
O well, I'll be back in 10 months!
Isn't it slide it up to reveal the speaker and slide it down to reveal the keypad? And if kids playing music over their phones speakers wasn't annoying enough now Samsung goes and encourages it.
Still nice looking phones I just hope Samsung have changed the UI as the way you sent text messages was long winded and you could never pick your own message alert tone.
The UI shouldn't be a problem since it's using S60, well, at least the i450 is. So the interface should differ much from a Nokia Nseries phone.
But if you also hate that UI, can't be helped then.
I mean "shouldn't differ"
I have no problem with Symbian phones UI as my better half has a Nokia N95. I was referring more to the Samsung OS UI. I'm not a big fan of Symbian because it's not something I need but I still prefer it to Samsungs and LG's UIs. Funny how they are identical.
Oh wait they mean slide the front up to reveal the keypad and down to reveal the speaker - DOH
I really, really don't like those..
I wish they made a music version of the u700 or the u600.
Now those were good looking.
sigh.. how hard can it be to find a phone that plays a variety of none DRM crippled formats (avi,xvid,ogg,mp3/4) with 3G GSM HSDPA and a decent 680x480 LCD, Yep! totally impossible right now. Closest I have come is a O2 flame but they did a crap job on the software then crippled it with no HSDPA support.
I think the reason few phones support OGG and AVI is because they require more power when decoding them. I remember iRiver's first OGG spporting DAP had a very short battery life because of the OGG support.
The i450 is a S60/Symbian phone. It'll play OGG and DivX with free additional software.
Yes but how is the battery life affected when playing OGG/AVI?
i love the wheel ... its cheeky and works nicely without looking at the device ...
Yesterday I made a small (no sound) video of the i450 at a press event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsrSYg328Qs
It looks promising. The white version looks a lot better than the black version:
"Slide 'er down to expose metallic speakers with a B&O ICEpower amplifier"
Great, can't wait to be on the bus when a load of teenagers get hold of this...
God damn tri-band! Seriously, Samsung!?!?