14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung, the South Korean manufacturer, has just launched two new HSDPA cell phones in its home country, on the Anycall network: SCH-W270 and SCH-W290. These new HSDPA devices feature a slider form factor, MP3 capability, video camera, built-in printer support and expandable memory. They're both just 11.9mm thick and have quite nice looks. It is known that the HSDPA technology offers customers data transfers at a very high speed, allowing easy and quick multimedia downloads.
The SCH-W270 model (also known as SCH-W2700), which was available in Japan before the Korean launch, is a clam shell phone that comes with nice specifications. Some of these are: a 1.3 megapixel digicam, a 2.3 inches LCD screen with color display, an MP3 player, Bluetooth connectivity, electronic dictionary and MS Office compatibility so that users can view Word or Excel files. SCH-W290 (or SCH-W2900) is a slide cell phone and its features don't differ too much, it only has a microSD port and a smaller screen, instead of 2.3 inches it has a 2 inches one.
Koreans can have any of the two phones in black or white for the price of 400,000 Won, meaning $430, ?320 or ?220. A similar HSDPA cell phone (similar in terms of price and features), KH1300, was released exclusively for the Korean market by LG in February this year. So SCH-W270 and SCH-W290 already have a direct "rival".
Samsung's first ever HSDPA mobile phone was unveiled to the world back in March 2005. In Korea, the first HSDPA compatible phone was launched by Samsung a year ago, and it was SCH-W200.
It's not official yet if SCH-W270 and SCH-W290 are available for the US and European markets too, but if they are, their prices will not vary much from the ones in Korea.