Samsung on Sunday May 25, 2008 unveiled the F480’s new brand as the Samsung Tocco - the Italian for touch. Samsung is spending a lot of money on the Tocco’s launch with an aggressive advertising campaign in the UK reaching a total of £3.5million: £1.5 million for TV, £1.3m for online and out-of-home, 350K for press, 170K on experiential and 100K on online and PR. The Samsung Tocco will be available from June in major European markets and soon across other GSM regions. It doesn’t look like the Tocco will be exclusive to any particular GSM carriers. Samsung has not announced the price for the Tocco yet, so stay tune - when we know, you’ll know.
Click to view the full image gallery over at Phone Magazine!
Samsung Tocco Overview
The Samsung Tocco, also known as F480 is the first in a series of capacitive touchscreen phones hitting the market this year. The Tocco features a new and unique TOUCHWIZ UI replacing the Croix UI. The 5-megapixel camera featuring auto focus and a CMOS video lens; are normally only found in high-end or prosumer DSLR cameras. So it’s an amazing feature to have on a phone, especially when the Tocco only measures 11.6 mm thick by 98.4 mm tall and 55 mm wide. In addition to CMOS, the F480 also feature automatic face detection technology and a sophisticated image stabilizer - again, these features aren’t commonly found in a phone.
The Samsung Tocco is also one of the first phone to feature the ‘smile shot’ mode which is in itself groundbreaking. The ‘smile shot’ feature enables the Tocco’s camera to detect when your girlfriend, kids or mom is smiling and automatically take the shot. Other features include 240 MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot supporting up to 8GB, HSDPA and USB 2.0. It has a battery capacity of 1000mAh with an estimated talk time of 3 hours and 250 hours of standby.
The quick and simple ‘drag and drop’ TOUCHWIZ GUI feature gives you instant access to your favorite functions at a moment’s touch. A unique menu of widgets display functions such as the clock, radio player, music player and more personal elements including photos and birthday reminders, which you can ‘drag and drop’ onto the home screen. Samsung’s so-called “differentiated tactile technology” also gives you a “tangible and pleasing feedback sensation” when you select items on the Tocco - I’ll have to see if this haptic feedback is any better than earlier Samsung phones, which have tended to just vibrate whenever the screen is tapped.
Click over to watch the Tocco’s unboxing ceremony video as well as my first impression and hands-on review..
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Apple introduced the new iPhone 3G on June 9 at WWDC 2008. The new iPhone 3G is priced at an amazing price of $199 for the 8GB model, and just $299 for the 16GB model. iPhone 3G will be available in more than 70 countries later this year, beginning with customer availability in 22 countries-Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US-on July 11. We’ll post the iPhone 3G prices in the other 21 countries as they get announced.
New iPhone 3G cases and accessories will be available at MY iPhone accessories store in the next couple of weeks. Additional information about the iPhone 3G is available over iPhone Buzz, so make sure to click on over for the latest buzz in iPhone 3G!