Samsung Electronics on Tuesday introduced the Samsung Galaxy S, an Android phone with a 4-inch screen, and hinted at a new content offering.
J.K. Shin, president of Samsung’s mobile communications business, unveiled the phone during his keynote speech at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas.
He called the Galaxy S a new class of smartphone and said it would be available worldwide this year.
The new class of phones must have three critical components, he said, including a high quality screen, speed and content. In addition to the 4-inch Amoled screen, the Galaxy S runs a 1GHz processor, he said.
“Giant screens are not enough. Without content you’ll never give consumers what they want,” he said.
Shin vaguely said that Samsung has been collaborating with a “content giant” to deliver full length movies and TV shows to the phones. Samsung is also working to deliver best-selling books and magazines for download to phones, he said. He did not name the content company, saying only that the company would reveal more details in the near future.
The Galaxy S may compete with HTC’s HD2 phone, recently launched by T-Mobile in the U.S. and already available in Europe. In the U.S., T-Mobile loads the phones with a Blockbuster application that lets users download full-length movies to their phones. The operator said it was the first to offer such an application.
The HD2 has a 4.3-inch screen and has been praised by European users but has one downfall: It runs Windows Mobile 6.5 and will probably not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7.