Samsung F490, one of the latest high-end touchscreen phones released by the South Korean company, is now available at Vodafone UK. The handset is offered only with contract agreements, for prices starting from free, with some expensive data plans for several years, to �200 (about 260 Euro or $400).

Samsung F490 is slim and lightweight (115 x 53.5 x 11.8 millimeters and 102 grams), and comes with a simple but elegant look, resembling another touchscreen Samsung device, the F700. But unlike F700, which hides a full QWERTY keyboard under its display, Samsung F490 does not have a hardware keypad/keyboard, hence its functions are controlled via the 3.2 inch touchscreen display that supports a 240 x 432 pixels resolution and 262k colors.

The sleek Samsung features tri-band GSM connectivity with GPRS and EDGE, as well as HSDPA 2100 for up to 3.6 Mbps data transfer speeds. Furthermore, the handset offers a high-end 5 Megapixel camera with flash, auto focus and video recording, Bluetooth 2.0, Music and Video players (with support for MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WMV, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264), 3.5mm audio jack, USB 2.0, NetFront 3.4 Web browser, integrated Google Search, Picsel document viewer, multitasking abilities, organizer, 130MB of internal memory and microSD card support for some extra GBs. All in all, Samsung F490 is a handset that features both style and advanced functionality, therefore it will surely be attractive for the British mobile enthusiasts.

With about 18 million subscribers, Vodafone is currently the second largest mobile operator in the UK, behind O2 and slightly ahead T-Mobile and Orange. The addition of Samsung F490 to Vodafone's offer will most probably not increase its subscribers base, but it's still a good thing for UK's mobile users that the handset is now available for purchase.