Samsung Offers a Peek at New Pocket PC Phone

SPH-M400 could be the most full-featured PDA phone on the market, featuring voice recognition, a TV tuner, and GPS.

HONG KONG -- Samsung Electronics has taken the wraps off a prototype of what is likely to be the most fully-featured PDA phone it has yet produced when it goes on sale early next year.

The SPH-M400 is based on Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition, Microsoft's operating system for PDA phones, and runs on CDMA 2000 1x EvDO networks. Such networks, which are already in commercial service in South Korea, are capable of data transmission at speeds up to 2.4 mbps. It was unveiled at Telecom Asia 2002, which officially opens here on Monday.

Looking much like a conventional PDA, the handset has a large thin film transistor LCD that can display 65,000 colors, voice recognition and a text-to-speech engine, a TV tuner, GPS satellite navigation, an infrared port, and a Secure Digital card slot with support for the SD I/O standard for plug-in peripherals.

It is based around an Intel XScale processor running at 400 MHz, measures 5.2 inches by 2.8 inches by .7 inches and weighs 7.1 ounces.

Similar Devices

The prototype was on display alongside four other PDA phone handsets that Samsung is preparing to put on sale overseas.

They were the SPH-i700 and SPH-i600, which are based on the Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition and Windows Powered Smartphone operating systems respectively, and the SPH-i330 and SPH-i500, both of which run the Palm operating system.

It is due to go on sale early next year in South Korea. Details of launch plans for other markets was not available.