The Soul of Samsung costs Rs20,000

Samsung Telecommunications India (STI) has announced the launch of its Flagship model, SGH-U900, in India along with eight new mobiles and lifestyle mobile accessories.

The U900 features Magic Touch by DaCP, which changes the navigation indicators on the keypad according to the user's needs, making navigation of the menus simple, intuitive and direct. The navigation panel's icons change according to function.

For example, when in music mode, music related icons would light up on the navigation indicators. When in camera mode, camera related icons such as zoom and brightness icons will appear.

At 12.9mm thin, the phone is equipped with professional photographic functions including a 5-megapixel camera. Other features include, face detection, image stabilizer and wide dynamic range (WDR). (See video: New product display: Samsung Soul)  

Users can access the Internet through the 7.2 Mbps high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) browser and share images or video taken with the phone. The speeds obtained with this technology are higher than that experienced in 3G networks.

For music lovers, the phone features music library navigation, digital power amplifier by ICEpower technology, Bang and Olufsen ICEpower.

The U900, also known as the Soul, is priced at Rs20,585.

Sunil Dutt, country head, Samsung Telecommunications India, on the occasion of the launch, said, "We believe that the Soul is the answer for today's style-conscious consumers, looking for a perfect blend of outstanding quality, design and performance. We are confident that the will enhance the Samsung consumer experience in the premium phone category."

In the business category, Samsung launched the SGH-i780 and the D780 phones. The sleek SGH-i780 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard and a full touch-screen. It runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 and offers push email, MS Office, and MSN Chat. It comes with GPS capabilities, an optical mouse, Wi-Fi support, and 2-mega pixels camera. The model is priced at Rs25000.

The other phone in this segment, the D780, is a tri-band, dual-SIM phone equipped with SIM toggle key (enables one to switch between SIMs), 2.1-inches QVGA TFT display, 2-megapixel camera, FM alarm, MP3 music player, email with XHTML, Bluetooth and Bluetooth printing capability, and support for up to 11 hours battery talk time.

In the multimedia category, Samsung launched the SGH-E251, SGH-M120, and SGH-J150 mobile phones. The SGH-E251 is Samsung's latest music phone, and comes with dedicated music control keys, 1GB content loaded MicroSD card, FM radio with RDS, and MP3 music player.

The SGH-M120 sports a stylish chrome finish, and comes with MP3 music player, stereo FM radio, video camera, GPRS Class 10, Cricket game and call time tracker, Hindi-English messaging, and 10MB internal memory. Its sticker price is Rs3795.

The SGH-J150 is only 9.9mm thick and sports a metallic design. It comes with a 1.9-inches display, 1.3-megapixel camera, MP3 music player, FM radio, Bluetooth connectivity, and expandable memory (MicroSD). It is priced at Rs5300.

However, the entry-level category has not been left untouched, with the introduction of two new Guru handsets: the Guru 145 and the Guru 300. The first one comes with a 65k color CSTN display, speakerphone, mobile tracker, 16 polyphonic ring tones, and 8 hours battery talk time, and is priced attractively at just Rs1696.

The second model, the Guru 300, is a stylish pearl-finish flip phone equipped with multimedia features including FM recording, MP3 ring tones, Hindi-English messaging, Indian calendar, and Java games (Cricket and Sudoku). This model is available for Rs2999.

Additionally, Samsung launched mobile accessories including the unique coin-shaped Samsung headset WEP 500, and WEP 420.