Samsung announced the release of its i780 smartphone (also known as SGH-i780) for the Indian market, in a partnership with The MobileStore, one of India's largest chains of mobile retail stores.

Running on Windows Mobile 6.0, Samsung i780 is a business-oriented handset that packs lots of nice features such as: a 2.6 inch TFT touchscreen display with 320 x 320 pixels and 65K colors, a full QWERTY keypad, Wi-Fi, GPS, an "optical mouse", tri-band GSM connectivity with GPRS and EDGE, HSDPA connectivity, Office document viewer, Opera Mobile browser, email, Music player, FM radio, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, 150MB of built-in memory and microSD card slot. The handset has a slim case that measures only 12.9 millimeters in thickness and packs a powerful 1480 mAh battery that can last up to 7 hours in talk-time mode and up to 400 hours in stands-by mode.

Talking about the new smartphone, Mr. Sunil Dutt, Country Head at Samsung Telecommunications India, stated: "The exclusive premier of the i780 through the widespread network of The MobileStore coupled with the touch-and-feel consumer experience provided at these stores, I am confident, will create a very positive initial buzz for this Business phone."

Mr. Rajiv Agarwal, CEO and Director at The MobileStore Limited, added: "We are glad to be associated with Samsung for this exclusive tie-up for SGH-i780. The newly launched i780 promises to be one of the best business phones in the market, and customers can buy it exclusively at select outlets of The MobileStore. In addition, we offer our customers a world-class shopping ambiance at The MobileStore, and also have a team of trained and well-informed store staff with live phones, to facilitate our customers in making their purchases."

The announced retail price of Samsung i780 is of 25,000 INR ($585 or 370 Euros), but the website of The MobileStore lists the smartphone at only 20,379 INR ($476 or 305 Euros).

For several live images with the i780, you can check out the Softpedia report from CeBIT 2008, where we captured the handset together with another Samsung smartphone, namely the i200.