Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition Announced: Full Touchscreen + Slide Keypad!

Samsung has surprised everyone by announcing their flagship handset for 2009, a full week before the Mobile World Congress!

The Samsung S8300 Tocco Ultra builds upon the brand built by the highly successful Samsung F480 Tocco in the second half of last year, but this revamped version ramps up the stats significantly!

The first handset to combine a full touchscreen interface with a slide-out numerical keypad, the Samsung Tocco Ultra utilises a 2.8″ WQVGA screen with enhanced haptics, offering ‘astonishingly bright, clear and brilliant colours, housed in an ultra-slim 12.7mm body’, according to the press release we got this morning.

The Tocco Ultra also has enhanced haptic touch technology, which makes navigating the Touch-Wiz v1.5 interface (a expanded version of the UI seen on the original Tocco and the Samsung M8800 Pixon) fast, intuitive and easy!

As the name suggests, the multimedia functionality of the Tocco Ultra is, well…ultra!

With an industry-leading 8 megapixel camera (complete with with dual power LED flash and smile shot mode) meaning super-high resolution snaps, the Tocco Ultra Edition offers GPS satellite navigation with geo-tagging, 7.2Mbps 3G connectivity, and a robust media player for both music and movies. 30fps VGA video recording is also impressive, as is the edit suite which allows you to film and chop up your latest masterpiece of mobile cinema on the fly.

The Tocco Ultra does however stop short of reaching full smartphone status, as there is no wi-fi connectivity in-built. However, with Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and USB 2.0, the Tocco Ultra is still well catered for when it comes to syncing up your gadgets.

Mark Mitchinson, Vice-President Samsung Mobile UK and Ireland said: “The introduction of the stunning Tocco Ultra Edition gives us the opportunity to build on the popularity and huge success that Samsung and our customers enjoyed with Tocco. After the monumental achievements in 2008 we’re looking forward to the Tocco Ultra Edition driving our business forward and showcasing our leading credentials for style and innovation.”

We at Omio have always had a soft spot for the F480 Tocco, it was slim, stylish and seemed to be the only touch-based handset that tried a to be a mid-range alternative to the iPhone, rather than a cheap facsimilie. People noticed this (mainly via our great Samsung Tocco Pink review!), and bought it in droves.With the supercharged Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition offering the best of both touch and keypad worlds, the Korean manufacturer could well rejuvenate the high-end mobile market in the same way…

Better yet, the same Orange stock checklist that revealed the LG Arena KM900 as being out in February has the Samsung Tocco Ultra earmarked for an end of March release. So it’s not long to wait if you want to take your Tocco love to the next level!

Tags: f480, m8800, pixon, s8300, samsung, tocco, tocco ultra