Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson on Sunday separately unveiled new smartphones on the eve of Mobile World Congress.
Samsung’s touch-screen Samsung Wave device, due to launch commercially in May, is the first smartphone incorporating the firm’s new OS Bada.
The smartphone features a 3.3-inch long touch screen, five-megapixel camera, high-definition video, Samsung Apps, integrated contacts list, integrated inbox and 1GHz Samsung applications processor.
Smartphones have been a weak spot in the vendor’s device line-up, but the firm’s head of mobile communications JK Shin described Samsung Wave as a “new era” for the firm, according to AFP.
The high-end smartphone is one of around five Bada smartphones Samsung aims to release this year. Samsung also intends unveiling five to six Android-enabled devices and a few Microsoft-driven smartphones in 2010.
The company is angling to triple its smartphone sales to 18 million in 2010 vs. 2009, Jean-Philippe Illarine, Samsung France’s telecommunications marketing director told AFP in Barcelona.
Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson has taken the wraps off its Android-enabled Xperia10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro smartphones, the little brothers to its Xperia X10, the firm’s first Android smartphone which was unveiled in November.
“There has been an enormous buzz around Xperia X10 so it is really exciting to be already unveiling compact versions of this powerful proposition,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, Sony Ericsson’s chief creation officer.