Samsung's 5-megapixel handset
Samsung’s American arm will be unveiling 25 to 30 phones to be launched on the US market in 2005, including a 5-megapixel handset with a 3X optical zoom. It’s unclear if the phones are going to have European equivalents as there’s no actual spec list at present. We’re hoping they will be heading our way, however, since there’s some exciting new features on offer, including the world’s first speech-to-text dictation phone. This allows you to speak your messages to your handset, which converts them into text for your automatically. Handy if you’re in the car – although it would be better if your phone then read your received texts out to you as well.
Other handsets on offer include a 2-megapixel handset with a QVGA screen and a TF-R memory card. Multimedia capabilities seem to be the order of the day, with the new line up of phones supporting the next-gen high speed wireless network, EVDO. This will make sending and receiving pictures, video and data far faster – comparable to cable modem or DSL connectivity apparently. Music on demand (MOD) and Video on demand (VOD) phones are also part of the planned portfolio. These give instant access to digital music and video, allowing users to download and stream music and video straight to a handset. Phones with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are also planned for launch and BlackBerry push email will be available on some.
There’s no pictures at present (although check out Gizmodo’s coverage of leaked concept handsets for an idea of what to expect) but it sounds like they’ll be available in a wide variety of form factors.
[Update: see more info here]