Live from CeBIT: Samsung's new cellphones

Samsung released nothing short of a million new mobile phones this week at CeBIT. So many of them are gadgety that it's hard to pick one as the star of the show, but their new P730 (pictured above) probably gets the most looks.
It's just a regular clamshell-style megapixel cameraphone, but has a crazy flip and twist hinge that lets you use the phone like a regular flip phone, an L-shaped cameraphone (a la the Motorola V80) or a small candy-bar style digital camera (like the Sony Ericsson S700). Honestly, despite the gadget-factor, the hinge is ugly, the phone is thick and the camera button is actually hidden under the hinge, so you can't activate it except when the phone is in regular flip mode (not to be confused with Busta's flipmode).

Samsung also launched two new CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO phones, that could potentially make their way into the US on Verizon's new high-speed network. The SPH-V4400 has a camera that points out of the side of the phone and a screen that flips and then twists sideways so that the phone looks like Panasonic's SV-AV100 mini-camcorder when you use it to take pictures. The SCH-V500 is a flip phone for video conferencing with a screen that has a hinge in the center so it can rotate 90 degrees into landscape mode.

Finally, Samsung has launched the D710 (pictured at right), the successor to their never-released D700 Series 60 smartphone. The phone looks and feels like a Samsung version of Nokia's 7650 (the original Series 60 phone), but improves the resolution of the camera to a megapixel and is the first phone I've ever used with a slide-out keypad where the keys were actually comfortable and easy to press. The only problem is that like the 7650, the D710 is a little too thick – at least for our tastes, but the spring-loaded slide is sure to get some ooohs and aaahs when you take it out of your pocket.