Home › News ›

CES 2006

Intro Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Comments 100+

The Samsung SCH-A930 is undeniably a handsome clamshell. While it is not as thin as the A900, it certainly is sleek and very light. In fact it is so light that when I first picked it up, I had to check that there was actually a battery in the phone. Despite its feather-weight, the A930 felt well put-together and rested nicely in the hand. It also has huge keys - perfect for texters with larger hands. Between its good looks and powerful features - including access to the new VCAST music service - this is shaping up to be a desirable phone for Verizon subscribers.

In addition to the ZX20 announced earlier this week, Samsung was also showing off a second HSDPA phone for Vodafone in Europe. Like the A930, this new clamshell was impossibly light, but this UMTS phone was also shockingly thin; it's easily a match for Motorola's 3G RAZR V3x in terms of thickness. It's more than a match for the V3x in terms of speed - Samsung was using this phone to demonstrate 3.6 Mpbs downloads. Rumors have been that Samsung will be the first manufacturer to offer a 3.6 Mbps handset in the U.S.

Samsung also showed off a number of their European and Korean phones, most of which have already launched. Samsung had a number of new phones on display that support the new live-TV standards like DVB-H and MediaFLO. The form factor is no longer pill shaped, but more closely matches the recently unveiled E750. However the flip and rotation mechanism to change the screen to a horizontal orientation are still the same. The non-clamshell model also has a swivel display with a landscape mode. Rumor has it one of these models shown off will be modified for the US and will be Verizon's first MediaFLO phone.

Although it is not bound for the US, the SGH-P300 is an interesting phone. It is not a new form factor - other Asian manufacturers have made "credit card" phones before - but it is still thinner than the SLVR and packed with features. The P300 is tri-band GSM/GPRS so it will work here, but has a very odd keypad layout more geared towards Asian countries than the West.