CES 2005
The Samsung SCH-A890 is the company's first EV-DO phone. With a megapixel camera, dual color displays, and advanced voice control, this phone was headline news just a few days ago.
This week, Verizon announced that the A890 is one of three phones Verizon will release on February 1st to coincide with the launch of VCast, Verizon's new EV-DO-based streaming video service for consumers.
The Samsung i730 - possibly the ultimate CDMA convergence device - was first revealed a few weeks ago at an event in New York. But for whatever reason, they asked people not to take photos of the sliding QWERTY keyboard. Fortunately, that is no longer the case:
The i730 includes EV-DO high-speed data, as well as Bluetooth, an SDIO slot, speakerphone, and stereo speakers. On the PDA side, it runs Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC 2nd Edition, supports landscape mode, and packs in 64 MB of RAM memory.
As we first reported a couple of weeks ago, the i730 will also include Wi-Fi. Although Samsung is still not mentioning this major feature in press materials and marketing for the i730, I was able to verify that the prototype on display here at CES certainly has functioning Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi, however, like the integrated megapixel camera, will be a carrier-optional feature with the i730. So we could see something like Sprint offering the i730 with a camera but no Wi-Fi, while Verizon offered it with Wi-Fi but no camera (in theory - I don't have any specific info either way).
What's possibly most exciting is that Samsung currently expects the i730 to launch in Q1, which means in less than three months. If there are no major delays, that will be sooner than some people had expected.
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