Samsung S5600 preview: First look

Samsung have quite wisely decided to make the complacent LG Cookie smile go away. And they have released not one, but two devices to compete with it. The Samsung S5600 is one of them and luckily we have the opportunity to play with it for a while with the Samsung S5230 soon to follow.

Attacking the midrange market the Samsung S5600 is a member of the new affordable touchscreen gang. Quite reminiscent of the HTC Touch with its size, shape and display, the Samsung S5600 is actually not a smartphone. It run on the proprietary Samsung TouchWiz user interface, and while it's not a high-end phone, it still has some decent equipment.

Samsung S5600 official photo

Samsung S5600 at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 12, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar, no keypad
• Dimensions: 102.8 x 54.8 x 12.9 mm
• Display: 2.8-inch TFT, QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels)
• Memory: 80MB, Non-hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• Camera: 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash and smile detection
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Misc: Accelerometer sensor, FM radio with RDS, Find Music recognition service, DNSe, gesture lock
• Battery: 1000 mAh battery

Samsung S5600 was first spotted at MWC 2009, but no details were released by that time. In fact, it was so conspicuously displayed, that we even missed including it in our detailed coverage of the event.

The Samsung S5600 in our studio

The Samsung S5600 is not a ground-breaking device and probably won't create much hype, but still it's one of those devices that sell… and these devices sell in quite some volumes.

Join us on the next page for a walkthrough of the Samsung S5600 exterior and ergonomics. Just bear in mind to take it easy on us and the S5600 - it's still a rather early pre-production unit and changes are possible (and highly likely) at all hardware and software levels.