Samsung SCH-W510, the first mobile phone from the second largest handset manufacturer to be made out of bio-plastic materials, was recently presented in South Korea.

The plastic used in Samsung W510 is obtained from corn, literally. Moreover, the phone doesn't include hazardous metals like Lead, Cadmium or Mercury. These are the reasons why the Korea Eco-Products Institute has awarded the handset a "green label", making it the first Korean handset to get this award.

Eco-friendly products are generally deficient in terms of functionality, but that's not the case with Samsung W510. What we have here is a nice-looking slider that comes with the following features: a 3 Megapixel camera with flash and video recording, a QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) display, mobile TV capabilities, CDMA and HSDPA connectivity for data transfer speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, secondary camera for video calls, Music and Video players and Bluetooth. The rest of the features (like internal memory or battery lifetime) are not known yet, but it's clear that the new Samsung is a mid-end one that can rival with any other non eco-friendly phone from this category.

Samsung W510 is one of the two new eco-friendly handsets unveiled by the South Korean company last month. The other green phone is F268, which is also a slider with mid-end features.

The W510 is already available in South Korea, in two color versions: a black one and, of course, a full-green one. Unfortunately, Samsung has not said anything regarding the release of the handset in other countries. It's worth mentioning, though, that the W510 was approved by the FCC a few months ago - thus, if the right frequencies (meaning the North American ones) are in place, the US might soon be getting the Corn Phone too.