Is it coming to this? Are touchscreen phones going to be the new default, the way clamshells have been for years and candybars were before that? If the specs and pricing get much lower, it’ll be easier to get Grandma some low-end Touchmaster than a basic Moto flip phone. In any case, Samsung’s newest touchscreen offerings are pretty much what you’d expect.
Both phones sport Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, and both have a couple drops of internal memories and MicroSD up to 8GB. They’ll play back videos of various formats, but the screens aren’t so hot and you’d burn through your battery. They also both have a 3-megapixel camera with smile recognition, and built-in Shazam support for their music player. Both are quadband and support Bluetooth 2.1. “Full Internet browsing support” is in the same sentence as “mobile Internet experiences,” so I can’t tell you whether it’s got a real browser or not. With a touchscreen phone I should hope so.
The S5600 is the slightly higher-end model in this case. It supports HSPDA, has a little more internal memory (80MB vs 50MB). Its screen is slightly smaller, though, at 2.8″ and 240×320 vs. the S5230’s 3″ 240×400. Pricing isn’t available yet, nor carrier information.
They also both have a feature I haven’t heard about called “Gesture Lock,” which allows you to wake the phone and go directly to a menu or other item depending on the gesture you draw. Sounds like a great idea to me, I wish I had it on my G1.