9.9 mm thin

Mar 15, 2007 10:27 GMT  ·  By

Mobile phone manufacturer Pantech is renown for its innovative products and appealing designs. It has now announced that it will be bringing a new technology to Korea this year by using magnetic levitation to make its mobile phones even slimmer.

This of course leads one to think about Samsung and a possible competition between the two companies, since Samsung currently manufactures the world's slimmest handsets.

Pantech has created a 9.9 mm thin model which uses magnets to create a smooth sliding mechanism. Since the usual spring doesn't need to be included, this allows the slimming down of the handset by several millimeters.

'Thus far, slider-type phones have employed springs, which have made the models thicker than bar-type or clamshell-type handsets,'' Pantech spokesperson Yang Yu-in said.

Aside from its utter slimness, Pantech's new mobile phone will also pack some nice features. Not a lot of details on what it will include are available, but it will come with a 1.3 megapixel camera, a media player with support for several file formats and T-DMB capabilities that enables user to enjoy crystal clear video, CD-quality audio and data.

Pantech spokesperson Yang Yu-in commented: 'This will be the world's first cell phone based on magnetic levitation technology. The top half of the slider moves via magnetic power. Thanks to magnetic forces, its users will be able to almost automatically slide open their phones and vice versa. This is an out-of-box product'. Moreover, Yang said that Pantech will continue to come up with slim but strong models, and consider that they have already created a trend on the market.