Samsung Monte S5620 - Cool touchscreen phone

Feature phones or dumbphones remain the most widely used mobile phone on the planet. In the US alone, they account 72% of all mobile phone sales. With features on midrange handsets matching those in smartphones but a lower price point, for most folks there's no need for smartphones. The Samsung S5620 Monte comes as the latest feature phone challenge to smartphones.

Redefining the Feature Mobile Phone

Korean phone makers Samsung and LG have been in the forefront redefining feature phones that not only blur their distinction from smartphones but are steadily appealing to a market that could have gone for smartphones. The Monte is latest from the world's second largest mobile phone producer with TouchWiz 2.0 UI to give it the look and feel of a smartphone and a feature set that can shame even budget to mid-priced smartphones

The Monte is a 3G phone on the dual band UMTS and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G. It comes with HSDPA at 3.5 MBps, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and standard microUSB 2.0. It even has SatNav functionality often reserved for smartphones with a GPS receiver using Google Maps 3.0. It goes a step up with Google Latitude for pinpoint accuracy of your location.

A 3-inch Wide QVGA with 256k colors is already a common feature in affordable full-touchscreen handsets but the Monte gets better with a capacitive touchscreen that can also be rare in many smartphones. There's the usual accelerometer for auto rotate viewing and is used for it turn-to-mute feature.

Other features common with many smartphones include a 3.2 megapixel fixed focus camera that comes with smile detection, geo tagging and a QVGA video recording at 15fps. A secondary CIF camera on the face for 3G video calls is there which some smartphones deliberately miss out. Apart from media players, mobile entertainment comes with a stereo FM receiver with RDS and 3.5mm headphone jack. Listening gets enhanced with stereo widening and simulated surround with its DNSe (Dynamic Natural Sound engine).

Internal memory is a mere 227 MB but you get hot-swappable microSD expandability you up to 16 GB. You can have up to 9 hours of talk time and 770 hours of standby time with a 960 mAh li-ion battery when charged to the max.

Stiffer Competition

Getting stiff competition from emerging feature phones is nothing new. We've seen that emerged with dumbphones getting smartphone features at a lower price and smartphones going down in price but giving up on some of the features the market expects.

The Monte is just the latest to mount this challenge and a clear indicator of feature phones for the year. Samsung's own B7300 Omnia LTE matches the Monte feature for feature but with the edge of a Windows Mobile OS. But the market seldom considers an OS providing any edge for as long as the features work as expected.

Availability

Samsung announced its new Samsung S5620 Monte will start shipping in the 2nd quarter of the year. There's only one color - black. It is still too early for any pricing information but with some remarkable feature set and a promised affordability, this is one feature phone we look forward to seeing in the markets soon.

Samsung Monte Contract Deals
http://samsungmontes5620.yolasite.com/