US-based carrier Cricket and Samsung announced the launch of the Samsung Messager Touch (SCH-r631). The feature-phone is the third Samsung Messager device that adds to the carrier's line-up lately.

The slider handset comes equipped with a 2.6-inch QVGA touch-screen display, full QWERTY slide-out keypad, 2.0 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, 100 MB internal memory, microSD card slot for memory expansion.

"Both the Samsung Messager and Samsung Messager II have been incredibly popular additions to our device offerings over the years, and we expect that this new touch screen version will be no different," stated Al Moschner, Cricket's chief operating officer.

"The Samsung Messager devices allow our customers to take advantage of the unlimited multimedia messaging offered in our all-inclusive service plans, in a modern and stylish package," Moschner continued.

Samsung Messager Touch SCH-r631 features pre-loaded widgets, as well as intuitive navigation through the Samsung Touchwiz Lite interface and MyHomeScreen.

The phone can be customized by placing links of their favorite apps, web pages, or live web info, like horoscopes, news and weather, on any of their 3 homescreens.

Additional Cricket services supported by the Messager Touch include Cricket Navigator, Mobile Email, and mybackup.

"The highly affordable Samsung Messager Touch is a great full multimedia solution for our versatile handset line-up," stated Matt Stoiber, Cricket's vice president and general manager of devices.

"With this new device, our customers have the widely-popular touch screen capabilities at a realistic price, with real-life rate plans they can afford. Cricket now offers everything from basic to Smartphone, and everything in between on our wide-reaching array of devices," said Stoiber.

The mobile phone is available in Cricket branded retail stores for $159.99, in either black or white color schemes.

Further, the carrier will also be offering an affordable, all-inclusive $45 unlimited nationwide talk, text and picture/video message plan with this device, which also includes unlimited web browsing on Cricket's all 3G network and an even more value-friendly plan of $35 for simple unlimited talk and text capabilities.