New Samsung S60 Device
I realize I focus mostly on Nokia devices here, but it’s a Symbian blog, and I’m glad to see other manufacturers using the OS. Helps spur Nokia on to create better handsets. The most recent non-Nokia S60 is the Samsung SGH-i570 slider. Not your normal, slider, though, as this one opens to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. VERY interesting form factor, I kinda like it.
The specs are nothing to write home about, tri-band GSM with Euro 3G, 2MP cam, WiFi, a respectable 160MB of onboard memory (no mention of RAM), and a microSD slot. The SGH-i570 runs Symbian 9.1 with S60v3, but no mention if it’s Feature Pack 1 or not.
What’s fascinating, though, is that Samsung has the exact same phone available as the SGH-i620, only that one runs Windows Mobile. Interesting. You can check more pictures of the SGH-i570 here, but let’s think about what other manufacturers could potentially slap Symbian into a currently Windows Mobile-only form factor?
HTC, 
for one. Raise your hand if you’d like to have an HTC Vox (pictured) running S60?! I do, I do! Nokia’s already explored 2 form factors that allow the quick-entry of a regular phone keypad to be paired with the long-entry convenience of a full QWERTY keyboard, but they haven’t done much else. Another design I’d like to see is the Helio Ocean, with it’s dual-sliding capabilities, offering a regular keypad one way, and a QWERTY the next. Simply fantastic.
Can you think of any other form factors that you’d like to see sporting that S60 goodness?
The Helio Ocean as an S60 device would be gr8, imo. But if you put this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ6TphADbA) on the E61i, that’s all the forms of text entry I would need in a symbian phone.
The curious bit for me is that the SGH-i570 apparently uses an older version of Symbian OS (9.1) than the SGH-i520 (9.2) which is already shipping, there’s something odd there. More SGH-i520 details - http://feetup.org/wiki/SamsungSGH-i520
A number of the HTC phones have interesting form factors, and it’d be nice to see a decent OS on them. The main goal for S60 though has to be the mid-market, which devices like the N76 aren’t really meeting yet. Ironically UIQ is arguably doing a better job here with phones like the SE W960 and the Moto Z8.
Hi Ricky. If it’s Symbian 9.1 it’s not FP1 right?? So no doub about am i right? Cheers.
no doubt about it… (terrible typos)
I think I would like to see the “iPhone” form factor with S60
And a little bit better QWERTY keyboard, 5MP camera and so on…