14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung Steel is a brand new phone that will be available exclusively via Vodafone UK this summer. The handset has a nice metallic look and it seems to be a combination between G810 and U900 Soul, two of Samsung's most advanced devices from its 2008 line-up.
Although the new phone surely has a name made out of letters and numbers too, it is currently known only as Samsung Steel. The handset has a slider form factor and its case features a nice metallic finish (explaining the "steel" naming), somehow looking as the case of G810. When not slid, Samsung Steel can be controlled via its navigation pad that resembles the one of U900, but it doesn't seem to have any touch-enabled keys.
Aside from the attractive design, the new device brings several features that make it a mid-end phone. We don't have the full list of specifications but we know that the handset comes with tri-band GSM connectivity with both GPRS and EDGE, HSDPA for data transfer speeds (probably of up to 3.6 Mbps), a 2.2 inch TFT display with 240 x 320 pixels and support for up to 256K colors, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and a 3 Megapixel camera with video recording and digital zoom.
While the internal memory of the phone hasn't been unveiled, we do know that it has a microSD card slot for up to 8GB of extra memory, which should be enough for storing about all the music and data users might want.
For the moment there's no word about how much users will have to pay for Samsung Steel. Anyway, the handset could be available for free (with some expensive Vodafone data plans), as well as for prices of up to several hundred GBP.