handset

Earlier today I brought you an early hands-on with the Garmin Nuvifone. But where pictures may be worth a thousand words, videos are worth more. Here’s our video of the Garmin Nuvifone in action, so you can make your own judgements on the user-interface.

My fearless booth tour guide did the voiceover, and the background is loud, but you can still make out a bunch of the features as he lays them out for you.
The Nuvifone is due out in the fourth quarter of this year, but pricing and carrier information is not yet known.

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I’m here just 85 miles north of the equator in steamy Singapore, a brief 24 hour door-to-door hop skip and jump from the United States, for the CommunicAsia conference, and I just had a hands-on with the new Samsung Omnia smartphone. The Omnia has a a 3.2-inch touchscreen display and will be hitting Singapore’s Singtel and StarHub carriers (HSDPA, GPRSH) this week, and the rest of Europe later in July, and China in August.

I can easily say the Omnia is the first full-featured Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional phone that I’ve had hands-on with that actually packs enough power under the hood to keep up with the fancy custom-UI overlay called “TouchWiz UI” that Samsung added.

On the home screen, there are about 14 widgets that run along the left side, and Samsung says more will be available. To activate a widget, like the movie player for example, you just finger-slide the widget from its toolbar out onto the mainscreen, and the program launches. Where phones like the HTC Touch struggled and navigation was a bit clunky, the Omnia, at least for the time being, is fluid and quick. Click the link below for more shots, including a spy-shot of the white version.

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The Samsung Glyde was announced for Verizon Wireless today. The $249 phone, after a $50 rebate, has a 2.8” haptic touchscreen and a full QWERTY keypad that slides out from under it.

We liked the messaging capabilities of the Samsung Glyde, but were frustrated by its confusing and often unresponsive touchscreen and user interface. The LG Voyager costs $50 more and offers a second display, an onscreen QWERTY keypad, and support for V Cast Mobile TV. And the upcoming Samsung Instinct at least tries to be innovative with its easier-to-customize favorites menu and voice-activated local search, although that phone lacks a physical keyboard.

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Verizon Wireless and Sprint customers have had mobile TV access for some time now. Yesterday AT&T caught up by announcing its Mobile TV platform, which will be available in May for the LG Vu and the Samsung Access handsets. This morning, the dual-band 3G and quad-band GSM Samsung Access was officially announced.

The Access has many features we’ve grown accustomed to, like a 1.3-MP camera with 8X digital zoom, as well as Java, Video Share, and Bluetooth 2.0 support. The most notable physical feature of this candy-bar style phone is its 2.3-inch 240 x 320 landscape display which Samsung claims will offer DVD quality while playing back TV shows from networks including CBS Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, Fox Mobile, MTX, NBC 2Go, NBC News2Go and Nickelodeon.

The pictures show a microSD slot for expanding picture and music storage, and while we don’t yet know what size microSD Card it supports, I’m guessing it’s around 8GB. A corded stereo headset is provided in the box, but please, Samsung, just once, could you include a 3.5mm headphone jack instead?

The Samsung Access will be available in May at the launch of AT&T’s Mobile TV platform, and pricing has yet to be determined.