Fone Forum

Korean Chaebol Samsung has officially released the I7500, its first Android-powered mobile handset and most importantly, the first to come from one of the top 3 mobile phone manufacturers worldwide.

The phone which may be exclusively available to mobile network operator, Telefonica, will be available in Germany through O2 and is expected to debut on other European networks in the next few months.

HTC's G2 Magic Android smartphone will go on sale next week but the Samsung I7500 will prove to be a tough cookie.  Expect it to go on sale for around 300 Euros.

The smartphone comes with a 3.2-megapixel AMOLED touchscreen display capable of displaying 480x320 pixels (a rather nontraditional 3:2 screen ratio), great to display the onscreen QWERTY keyboard.

It will also support 3G, 7.2mbps HSDPA and WiFi connectivity as well as the full set of Google applications that one can expect from the Android platform, with the added benefit of built-in Assisted GPS.

The I7500 surpasses the other Android smartphones with a 5-megapixel camera complete with a flash (ed: finally!), a 8GB internal memory plus support for up to 32GB microSD cards, a proper 3.5mm headphone socket and a 1500mAh battery.

Samsung will use a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A CPU to power the Cupcake version of Android, all packed in a stunning 12mm thick body.

There is a picture displayed of the model at the bottom of the page here (http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/4/27/samsung-presents-i7500-its-first-android-smartphone/).