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Samsung unpacks OLED but no Android

To Battersea last night for Samsung's much-teased 'Unpacked' launch. I was hoping for the company's still-upcoming Android-based i7500, but the main event was the unveiling (with much fancy holographic projection, but thankfully no Wings soundtrack) of the Jet.
Written by Charles McLellan, Senior Editor

To Battersea last night for Samsung's much-teased 'Unpacked' launch. I was hoping for the company's still-upcoming Android-based i7500, but the main event was the unveiling (with much fancy holographic projection, but thankfully no Wings soundtrack) of the Jet.

Samsung Jet: OLED screen, 800MHz CPU, TouchWiz 2.0 UI, Dolfin browser, built-in MS Exchange support.

The Jet is something of a hybrid, notable initially for its 800MHz CPU and 3.1in. AMOLED touch-screen with WVGA (480 by 800 pixels) resolution, 16.7 million colours, 180-degree viewing angle and 40 percent less power consumption than an equivalent TFT display, according to Samsung. The reason for the low power consumption, of course, is that TFTs need backlighting whereas OLEDs do not.

Samsung says the Widget platform will be opened up in due course.

Rather than Android, or Windows Mobile or Symbian, the Jet uses Samsung's proprietary OS and TouchWiz 2.0 user interface (previously seen on other touch-enabled Samsung 'feature' phones). This is an upgrade, with multitasking support, access to multimedia features via a six-sided cube, accelerometer-driven functions and something called Smart Unlock where you can unlock the phone and fire up a previously selected application simply by drawing a letter on-screen. There's no open application development platform or app store a la Android Market, but you do get Widgets that deliver things like news, weather, search and quick access to social networking sites. In the Q&A following the launch, Samsung repesentatives said the company was planning to open up the Widget platform in due course.

So far, so 'fancy feature phone' — but Samsung is touting the Jet as 'Smarter than a Smartphone'. How come? Well, it has a WebKit-based browser called Dolfin with built-in Flash support and 'one finger zoom' functionality. It also comes with Microsoft Exchange support built in, so if you're a business user who needs no more than Exchange email and a browser, Jet will handle the dull stuff and give you a lot of fun after hours. A file viewer also lets you inspect PDFs and PowerPoint files. Don't expect to see mobile enterprise apps on this platform anytime soon, if ever, though.

Other quick specs: quad-band GSM with EDGE and GPRS, plus HSDPA up to 3.6Mbps (not 7.2Mbps, though). Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), GPS, 2GB of internal memory, microSD card slot, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, 1,100mAh li-ion battery with 492m/300m talk (2G/3G) and 422h/406h standby.

The Jet's Dolfin browser is WebKit-based, with built-in Flash support.

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