Samsung Announces the Wave S8500
14 Feb 2010 - Samsung has announced the Wave S8500, a new smartphone that boasts a 3.3-inch AMOLED screen and their new Bada operating system. The new smartphone will be on sale in April, but no announcements have been made on pricing or carrier support in the USA.
The Wave S8500 has an impressive set of hardware specifications, including the first use of an AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen in a cell phone. Samsung claims that this new screen technology produces a brighter image and uses less power than the LED displays used in most phones. The resolution of the screen is an impressive 800 by 480 pixels. The S8500 also has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and includes 2GB of RAM, as well as a micro SD card slot for storing video or music. The camera on the phone takes 5 megapixel images and can capture 720p high definition video.
The Wave S8500 is also the first phone to use Samsung's new Bada operating system, which will be used on many of their future phones. The new OS will allow third party developers to produce software and sell it through the application store.
The Wave S8500 also supports the new Bluetooth 3.0 standard, as well as 802.11n WiFi. For cellular networks, the 900 and 2100MHz HSDPA 3G bands are supported, as well as EDGE/GPRS on the 850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz bands. This means that it would work with AT&T's 3G and 2G networks, but not with the 3G network from T-Mobile, which uses a different set of frequencies. The phone measures just 0.42 inches thick. No information on pricing of the Wave S8500 has been released yet in either the USA or other countries, but the company did say that it will be available in April.
