Samsung unveils 'iPhone killer' at 3GSM World Congress

The big names in mobiles have long been offering media-playing, multi-function phones and never looked likely to let Apple just come muscling into the market they created and take over with the quad-band iPhone model that Steve Jobs unveiled in January at MacWorld Expo. This week's 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona is where many will be showing their next-generation models and we kick of our coverage with a close up of the Ultra Smart F700, one of four multimedia Ultra Edition phones introduced by Samsung.

The F700 is a tri-band, GSM slider phone and being hailed - a little prematurely - as an iPhone killer. We'd reserve judgement until full specs, pricing and availability are known but can see that, in some ways, the Samsung does have an edge on Apple's much-hyped product, while falling short in others.

Outwardly, the F700 looks little different from many slider phones and so that means that, unlike the touch-controlled iPhone, it has a real Qwerty keyboard - something that we think is likely to make it a whole lot easier to use on a day-to-day basis. But the Samsung aims to offer the best of both worlds - the company saying that the screen itself is a full-touch type.

Samsung's F700 also scores by having a better-spec'd camera than the iPhone - five megapixels, rather than two and with autofocus. And, there's support for a wider range of media formats than the iPhone - MP3, AAC (+), eAAC+ and Real on the audio side and MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and Real for video.

Also significant, the F700 is claimed to provide 7.2Mbps High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) to improve its general internet-browsing capabilities as well as boosting the speed of media and file downloads.

In some significant areas, though, the Samsung does come up short compared with the iPhone.

At 2.78in (440x240 pixels), the screen is smaller than the iPhone's 3.5in (480x320) interface but, more importantly, there are big question marks over the F700's storage capabilities.

Apple will be offering the iPhone in 4GB and 8GB versions whereas all we know about the F700 is that it takes a microSD card. The capacity of the supplied card has yet to be announced and there's no indication of what additional internal storage will be included - though it's not likely that the total of both will come anywhere close to the 4GB of the lower-spec'd iPhone.

Samsung F700 tech specs


Standard		HSDPA 1.8Mbps/UMTS, EDGE/GPRS

		900/1800/1900 MHz + 2.1GHz

Camera		5 Megapixel with Auto-Focus

Display		262744 TFT (2.78”, 440x240)

Features		Full Touch Screen

		MPEG4/H.263/H.264/Real

		MP3/AAC(+)/eAAC+/Real

		QWERTY Keypad

		MMS/E-mail/JAVA/WAP 2.0

		Bluetooth® / USB

		Flash UI / Document Viewer

		Full HTML Browsing

		Offline Mode, BGM

Memory		microSD

Size		104 x 50 x 16.4 mm

Apple iPhone tech specs

Screen size	3.5 inches
Screen resolution	320 by 480 at 160 ppi
Input method	Multi-touch
Operating system	OS X
Storage	4GB or 8GB
GSM	Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data	Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
Camera	2.0 megapixels
Battery	Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing Up to 16 hours Audio playback
Dimensions	4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
Weight	4.8 ounces / 135 grams

So what would you prefer, the Samsung or an iPhone? Check out the company's press release about all the multimedia Ultra Edition phones it's unveiling at 3GSM, then share your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.