The Korean mobile phone giant Samsung is officially releasing a new line of distinctly
styled mobile phones aimed at spicing the drab handset for the trendy fashion-conscious ladies looking for a touchscreen without breaking the bank. Even the default TouchWiz user interface is customized and called Feminine demolishing any doubt about its target audience. This is the Samsung S7070 Diva sporting a unique 3D quilted texture at the back that not only feels great in your hands but makes it a stand-out among fashion phones in the market. At A Glance As an entry level budget mobile phone, the S7070 takes out many of the features weve come to associate with mid-priced handsets in this form factor. Theres no 3G and no WiFi so you cant do high speed internet surfing while on the road. While it has instant access to instant messaging and your favourite social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace right from the homescreen, you have to go through it at the less speedy GPRS/EDGE data connectivity speeds. Not bad as it gets the job done with pop-up SNS notification from these sites. But you do get Bluetooth 2.1 for high speed data synchronization between your handset and a desktop or laptop PC. This is your basic tri band GSM 900/1800/1900 with GPRS/EDGE class 12 housed in a monoblock touchscreen form factor measuring a compact 101.0 x 54.8 x 13.4 mm and weighs a very handbag-friendly 94 grams. Its a bit thick compared with other touchscreens but its compact size and a diamond-textured back makes it feel solid to the hands. You get a capable 2.8-inch resistive TFT LCD touchscreen display with QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels) and supporting 16 million colors and the usual accelerometer for auto-rate viewing orientation according to handset tilt. Its accelerometer also supports face-down muting and gesture locking. . Its imaging is likewise modest with a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera. But you get smile and face recognition as well as blink detection. Your shots can benefit from what Samsung calls Beauty effect a unique technology found on its digital cameras which automatically beautifies portrait shots. It also has a Lomo effect which is a take-off from old-style lomo cameras Its multimedia function gets the usual media players for your favourite playback of music and video files in the popular codecs. It also has an FM radio with RDS that supports broadcast recording, DNSe sound effect and Bluetooth 2.1 A2DP support for wireless stereo earphones when listening to your music files. Theres a modest 40 MB memory typical of budget phones but you get a non-hot-swappable microSD card expansion slot for up to 8GB. Its 960 mAh lithium-ion battery delivers a generous 10 hours of talk time and 13 days in standby. Availability The new Samsung S5150 Diva is expected to become widely available in Europe starting January next year, though it will launch in Russia, the Ukraine and the Netherlands before reaching other parts of Europe. No prices have yet been announced by Samsung but as a budget entry level touchscreen, this should come free on a contract from any network carriers.