BARCELONA--Samsung “hinted” at it with a gigantic sign adorning the outside of a building near the site of the Mobile World Congress, and it delivered the details on Sunday.
The new mobile phone “born” on Feb. 14, as the sign proclaimed, is the Samsung Wave, the first mobile handset to be released on Samsung’s new open mobile platform, bada, which means “ocean” in Korean.
The Samsung Wave includes a Super AMOLED 3.3-inch display, a Social Hub and TouchWiz 3.0 for a more customizable user interface.
Samsung says the Super AMOLED offers much brighter, clearer and less reflective AMOLED OnCell display, featuring a high resolution WVGA (800x480 pixels) screen with mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine) technology. Samsung is taking a page from its LCD TV and LED TV lineups – DNIe technology is also incorporated into those products.
Like other handset makers, Samsung is touting the extreme customization available via the phone.
TouchWiz 3.0 is a “new and improved” version of the UI. The device allows users to change the layout of the home page to allow instant access to Twitter, Facebook and a host of other social networking services. Or the device home page can be turned into a music player or customized to feature favorite photos. A Quick Panel feature allows for prioritizing and aggregating applications into one screen.
The Wave includes a 1 GHz processor, which the handset maker says offers the best graphic performance available today. The Wave includes Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n and will be available globally in April.