The Russian division of Samsung announced today the release of a Samsung Duos D780 in a Gold edition, which will be the official phone of Russia's Olympic team for the Beijing Olympic Games held in August. The handset will be commercialized as a limited edition, starting the 8th of August – the date when the 2008 Olympic Games debut.

Besides being plated with gold, the luxurious D780 also has the official logo of the Olympic Games engraved in its back case. These aspects aside, the golden D780 is the same device as the one Samsung released in Russia back in May.

Thus, the new D780 will bring, besides a richer look, the following features: dual-SIM capability, a 2.1 inch TFT display with 262K colors and 240 x 320 pixels, tri-band GSM connectivity (900 / 1800 / 1900 Mhzv) with GPRS and EDGE, email and Web capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, Music and Video player (supporting MP3, AAC+ and MPEG-4 formats), stereo FM radio, a 2.0 Megapixel camera with video recording, Java MIDP 2.0, document viewer, handsfree, USB 2.0 and a 1200 mAh battery. Weighing 108 grams and measuring 115 x 49.6 x15.7 millimeters, Samsung D780 also offers an internal memory of 60MB, expandable up to 2GB via a microSD card.

The retail price of the Olympic Samsung D780 was not announced yet, but it will surely be higher than the one of the original handset, which is around 300 Euros ($465).

D780 is not the only Samsung to come in a special Olympic edition, as last week the South Korean company also released the TouchWiz F488, which will be commercialized in China. As the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are approaching, we will probably see more "Olympic phones" released, and not only by Samsung – maybe Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola or LG will also get caught in the Olympic fever.