14 DAY TRIAL // Sky, brand name of the Korean-based Pantech Curitel, recently unveiled its latest mobile phone, called Sky Duke. The new handset has an elegant look and is made of "glossy materials", meaning some sort of luxurious metal. Sky Duke comes in a slider form factor and has an ergonomic design, with an easy to use keypad and a simple navigation pad.
Although it bears a name that makes us think about richness (not that there aren't/weren't broke Dukes too, but that's not important), Sky Duke does not bring too many high-end features. The slider offers 3G (HSDPA) connectivity, a 2.4 inch LCD display with a QVGA (240 x 320) resolution and unknown number of colors supported, Music player, Bluetooth, multitasking capabilities, document viewer, electronic dictionary and a pretty modest 1.3 Megapixel photo camera. Sky Duke also provides M-commerce applications and subway maps. No other features were revealed, but it's clear the handset is not targeted for those who need highly evolved devices, but rather for consumers who want simplicity, elegance and usability.
The new Sky Duke phone will be soon available in black and white, via SK Telecom (as Sky IM-S330) and KTF (as Sky IM-S330K) , the first two largest mobile operators in South Korea, for a retail price of 400,000 KRW (around $400 or 250 Euro). Unfortunately for the non-Korean users that find the Duke attractive, the handset has little chances to be released in other countries than South Korea.
But worry not, I'm sure a phone manufacturer will someday come with (at least) one Duke-named phone and release it all around the world. After all, "Duke" is a nice and distinct name. We might even see a Nokia Duke or a Sony Ericsson Duke - sounds better than just some numbers and letters put together.
