Samsung’s new top-of-the-line multimedia phone, the HD Icon, packs some pretty serious quality into its video and sound features. The 3.7 inch AMOLED screen is capable of 720p HD video recording and decoding, showing at 24 fps. What’s AMOLED? AMOLED allows a thinner form factor, greater viewing angle, lower power consumption, faster response time and higher contrast.The picture on the HD Icon is clear, and with the dual speakers onboard it’s a pretty damn good viewing experience for a mobile phone screen.
Samsung are pretty flexible with operating systems for their phones, and for this model they have chosen the Symbian OS.
The phone is being made in two memory sizes, 8GB and 16GB. Carriers will determine which one Samsung will bring to Australia, though indications are that the bigger model, the 16GB, will be the probable choice. memory is also expandable by MicroSD card, so that’s up to another 32GB of storage space.
Pleasingly the HD Icon will ship with a 3.5 mm headphopne jack, so you’ll be able to use your favourite headphones. Other features include an inbuilt compass and GPS, WiFi, and DLNA certification.
Price and availability
The HD Icon is due to be released in September 2009, with price to be confirmed closer to the launch date, though at the press briefing it was thought that the HD Icon would if available for outright purchase be somewhere around the $1,000 mark.
At the time of writing Samsung is still in discussion with the various telcos, so the carriers of this phone will also be announced closer to launch.
Specifications
- Network: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps (900/1900/2100MHz) EDGE/GPRS Class 12 Quad Band (850/900/1800/1900)
- Operating system: Symbian S60 5.0 (Full touch UI)
- Screen: 3.7 inch 16M Full Touch QHD AMOLED (360 x 640)
- Camera: 8 megapixel CMOS + CIF. Auto-Focus / Power LED Flash / Face Detection/Smile Shot / Blink Shot / Panorama Shot
- Video: DivX / XviD / H.263 / H.264 / WMV / MPEG4, RV. 24fps@HD (1280 x 720p) video recording. DLNA & HD TV out.
- Video Editing: Trim video, Audio dubbing, Live dubbing, Add subtitle, Image capture
- Audio: FM radio with RDS. Formats MP3/ AAC / AAC+ / eAAC+ / WMA / RA. Dual stereo speaker & DNSe 2.0
- Push Email (MS Exchange), Real-time video uploading, Smart Search
- Connectivity: Bluetooth v2.0 / USB 2.0 / Wi-Fi
- Memory: 8GB / 16GB Flash + External Memory slot : microSDHC (up to 32GB)
- Dimensions: 123 x 58 x 12.9 mm
- Battery: 1500 mAh
- Features: GPS / S-GPS / Xtragps with Navigation, Proximacy, Light Sensor, Compass, Accelerometer, Advanced TouchWiz UI with Widget, Mobile Widget, Share Pix, document viewer, E-Dictionary, Biz Card Recognition, podcasting, 3D games, application download
