Samsung Booth Tour : Mobile World Congress 2009

We had a good look at everything Samsung had to offer at their booth at Mobile World Congress, and it was all about touchscreen handsets!

The Samsung Tocco Ultra was definitely their star device, and the guys were pushing it loads on their stand. It’s an impressive device and certainly holds it’s own, with the TouchWiz UI easy to use as well as fun.

This quick hands-on video shows off some of the more impressive features on the device, including multimedia playback and the huge screen.

The Tocco Ultra was good, but don’t underestimate the multimedia prowess of the Samsung Omnia HD! They were showing off the richness and clarity of the handset’s 3.7″ AMOLED screen in quite an impressive way…

…a giant wall of 100 working Omnia HD phones! Wow indeed…

After seeing this, we had to get a closer look at the device, and the super-helpful tech guys on hand were only too happy to comply.

That screen is certainly unmatched at the moment, and to be able to both record and view high definition content makes the new Omnia the first real HD device!

Looking around, we saw that someone was a little miffed at the popularity of LG’s GD910 Watch Phone at CES 2009…

“We’ve been doing watch phones since 1999!” this display screamed, whilst also giving us a glimpse of their own Dick Tracy device for the 21st Century, the GT-S1100.

They also had a beautifully laid out display (made from recycled materials) showing off the eco-conscious “Blue Earth” phone. Want to charge your handset via solar power? Want to know how many trees you’ve saved by walking, using the built-in pedometer? Then this is the phone you’ve been waiting for!

A taste of the future also came in the form of the projector phone, the i7410. Able to project an image as large as 50 inches in crystal clarity, the i7410 is a very impressive device (still all touch, naturally) and finally means we will get a taste of the kinds of phones with unique features the Japanese have enjoyed for ages!

In terms of new music handsets, there was a real focus on making cool devices with Bang and Olufsen on audio output duties once again. However, our time with the Samsung Beat DJ (known as the Samsung ‘Krump‘ on T-Mobile, there is a god!) was…interesting.

The second floor focussed on the software side of things, demonstrating their App Store Samsung Shoppe with exciting stuff like a Symbian version of iPhone brawler Kroll, street racer Need For Speed and a Sky Television Mobile Service including Sky + Remote Record, all showing off the great content coming to their mobile devices.

YouTube vid links to them all just above, take a quick look at the future of apps for Samsung!

In terms of user interface, most of Samsung’s handsets were using a souped up TouchWiz 1.5, a cooler version of the UI made famous on the Samsung Tocco and original Omnia. However, as we left we saw an interesting picture of the future on their wall…

All about the cubes, as S-Class on the LG (you’ll see in a bit) has so ably demonstrated. But ‘Motion UI’? ‘Speech UI’? Good to know Samsung aren’t far behind on their roadmap.

With a very similar portfolio, and a number of handsets competing directly with one another (LG Arena vs. Samsung Tocco Ultra, for example), 2009 will be a very competitive year between the two Korean powerhouses for that second spot after Nokia.

With this lineup, Samsung are ready for a fight!

Tags: Beat DJ, blue earth, GD910, green phones, i7410, krump, Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress 2009, omnia, omnia HD, s1100, samsung, Samsung Blue Earth, tocco, Watch Phone