Pantech has recently released a new mobile phone that seems to be targeting little girls. Launched under the SKY name (Pantech's brand for South Korea), the new handset is available via SK Telecom, the largest Korean mobile operator.

Called SKY IM-U300K, the phone is a clamshell that comes with a set of external mini LEDs that can display various animations, including hearts, flowers or teddy-bear faces, which can be set to appear whenever you have incoming calls. For example, you can "program" a heart to be displayed when a person that you care about is calling.

Childish animations aside, the new SKY handset is pretty regular for the South Korean market. When flipped, the IM-U300K shows a more serious face, with a simple but nicely designed alphanumeric keypad and a 2.2 inch TFT display (240 x 320 pixels and 262K colors). The rest of the features offered by Pantech's girly phone include: tri-band GSM connectivity, WCDMA and HSDPA for data transfer speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps, DMB-TV capabilities for watching TV programs, a 2 Megapixel camera with auto focus and video recording, secondary camera for video calls, Music and Video players, Photo caller ID, document viewer, speakerphone, voice recording, predictive text input USB, Infrared connectivity, PC Sync, embedded games, organizer, calendar, alarm clock and so on.

Pantech IM-U300K weighs 108 grams and measures 91.8 x 48 x 16.9 millimeters (when closed, of course). Overall, it's a nice clamshell and I assume girls will get to love it.

Although Pantech is present on the American market too (its latest handset released in the US being Pantech Breeze, via AT&T), the new IM-U300K will probably be available only in South Korea - like the Sky Duke slider launched about two months ago.