Samsung F490 (or SGH-F490), the latest high-end multimedia touchscreen phone from the South Korean manufacturer, was officially launched today. The official photos and details come after a few weeks ago the handset was spotted in a video presentation from Ukraine and raised the interest of many mobile enthusiasts.

Samsung F490 comes to lure users with its elegant look, resembling Samsung F700 (or Apple's iPhone, if you want). The handset packs a 3.2 inch 262K color full-touch display with haptic feedback and has no physical keypad, hence it's fully controlled through the touchscreen interface which is based on the award-winning Croix UI. F490 weighs only 102 grams, measures 115 x 53.5 x 11.8 mm and it's a tri-band GSM (900 / 1800 / 1900) device with UMTS 2100 and HSDPA connectivity.

A very nice 5 Megapixel camera with video recording is included (providing good picture quality), as well as a front camera for video calls. Furthermore, the phone features Audio and Video players, built-in mobile Google apps, GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and microSD card support - features that, added to the ones already mentioned, make Samsung F490 a hell of a device, suitable for almost anything you would want from a mobile phone.

Curiously, Samsung didn't choose to launch the F490 at CES (today, January the 10th, is the show's last day), where all the important products are launched and presented, but this doesn't change the fact that F490 is a mobile phone that many users will want to own. And since we speak of owning, the multimedia handset will be available in Europe from February at a retail price of about 530 Euro (somewhere around $780). There are no details about its availability for other continents, however, the US should get the Samsung F490 too, probably from the second quarter of 2008.