Turn down the audio. They’re just talking about the new Halloween movie
Is it possible to go a day without Samsung announcing a world’s first? Not likely. During my recent trip to Korea, I pulled a little face time with the G800, which is the world’s first 5-megapixel camera phone with 3x optical zoom. It may be launching in Europe, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to let it pass on by and not let Samsung know we want it, too. It’s shiny with a metal casing and it ‘feels so good in my hands’ that I almost ran out with it in my pocket. It may look bulky, but it fit in the pocket of my jeans and I hardly noticed it even when I was sitting down. The G800 measures in at 3.97×2.01×0.74-inches. Enough of my rambling. Let’s get on to the deets.

As I mentioned before the G800 rocks a 5-megapixel camera, which puts it on par with the Nokia N95 and SE K850, but it boasts a 3x optical zoom with face detection, Wide Dynamic Range and a Xenon flash. You can also take panorama shots, burst shots and macro shots. It’s also sprinting along with HSDPA to upload those pics and videos on the fly wherever you are. The UI was simple to use as you’ll see in the video. The 2.4-inch QVGA LCD goes wide when you need it to and clearly displays everything you need while taking photos.

It supports stereo Bluetooth, USB 2.0, and has a microSD port for further memory expansion. A full HTML browser and PictBridge round out the package. It launches next month in November, but pricing has not been disclosed, yet.

This banner is splashed across every LG building in Gumi. If you’ve been to Seoul or if you haven’t then let me tell you how big Samsung’s presence is in the country. They’re everywhere. From construction to insurance to phones to cars and HDTVs all over the airport in Incheon. Once you step foot into the country, you know who the big dog is. I very rarely saw LG except for a few LG shops and product demos in the mall or train station. Crazy.

During my stay in Korea, I was privy to visit one of Samsung’s manufacturing plants in Gumi, which is referred to as the Gumi complex (the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world) and ranks as the sixth largest company if it were its own entity. The Gumi Complex is large, I don’t remember the exact acreage, but it’s massive. There are onsite apartment buildings for employees in addition to the wellness center that houses a grocery store, movie theater, daycare, and other amenities that make life peachy keen. Gumi employees can also earn college degrees through the post-graduate level without ever leaving the complex.
I wasn’t able to snap any pictures while in the factory so you’ll have to take my word on how it all went down. I witnessed the U600’s (Ultra Edition II 10.9) assembly from the chipset to the final product. The process by which the chips are manufactured was impressive and the speed with which they were produced was staggering. From start to finish a U600 was done within six minutes or so. The shiny housing is outsourced, which reduces quite a bit of time for the handset to be assembled.

The final leg of the phone’s journey proved to the most fascinating. It goes through a series of tests administered by robot and human. It enters the line and the OS is immediately tested where various languages could be seen on the interface. A special SIM card is then inserted to test the antenna and if that weren’t enough, a line worker would install a battery and make a quick call. If any of the phones failed to operate at any point in the last line of QA checks it’s spewed out from the conveyor belt to be looked over. I tried very hard not to acquire one by accident. Heh.

The batch of U600s I saw were marked with T-Mobile branding, but me thinks we’ll be seeing this or some variation of it in the near future in the US. It could be the Mysto from Helio, but who really knows?

Don’t they mean Bone Me Boots?

The Anycall Studio in Seoul is the place to go and check out all the latest phones Samsung has to offer. It’s a no pressure situation because they don’t sell any products there. It’s just meant to be a hands-on store so you can see each model is capable of. Head on over to play the claw machine and attempt to win free prizes or get help with your phone should you have any issues and rack up points like a frequent flyer to receive perks like battery reconditioning or get free photo printing.

Here they are. Nothing new and nothing we haven’t already covered, but I thought I’d snap a few pictures of them anyway.

When I first posted about the B710 there wasn’t a whole lot about it that made me think it was worth mentioning other than a quick blurb. I mean, sure, the PIP is cool, but I didn’t think it was THAT cool. After seeing it in person yesterday (and unknowingly a few days before since it’s my Uncle’s phone), I’ve certainly changed my mind. The ability to watch a terrestrial channel and satellite channel at the same time is neat, but the B710 possesses a feature that absolutely blew my mind. It can take 3D images. That’s right, you heard me, 3D images. Something to do with the screen produces the images in such a way that they look 3D. I heard Sharp had done something similar in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in person.

As I mentioned before, I had some hands-on time with the phone earlier in the week, but it didn’t seem like anything special. I immediately flipped it over and saw that the camera was only 1.3-megapixel and it had two lenses. Two lenses? 1.3-megapixel? Time to move on, right? Well, the $800+ tag might sway your decision. It’s probably the coolest phone I’ve seen in a long time. Other than the F700, which I hope makes its way stateside soon. ☺

a Cyber Soldier? The kids and even some adults (those over 21, though, they’re still punk kids) are obsessed with Starcraft. I don’t understand it. Walk into any PC cafe/room whatever you want to call it and everyone is playing that damn game. They should be out trying to score with chicks or something fun. Not sitting in front of a monitor for 10+ hours and dying from exhaustion. Gotta run, my Zergling are being rushed. Sh*t!

I can’t really understand anyone’s fascination with the E-mart in Yongsan. It’s not like you’re going to find super cool gadgets or anything. The reason this place is so famous is because of the sheer volume of crap that’s available for purchase. It’s just a bunch of counters crammed together with the brightest fluorescent lights known to man. They’re meant to blind you and the sales people will trick you into buying something useless (Ok, not really, but I think you get the point).

OMG, it’s a humidifier!

Are people over the age of, let’s say, 10 into this shit? Gundam dipped in gold or red with matching Nikes.

These pics were from my last trip. Maybe I’ll find something more interesting later today, but I highly doubt it.

I WANT THIS PHONE!

The Samsung i550 is the first GPS-enabled device from the Korean giant and it’s a great start. The quad band HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE S60 device features a 3.2-megapixel camera (AF w/ image & video editor), 150MB of internal memory, charging via microUSB, 2.6-inch screen, 128MB of RAM, dedicated hot keys, and a trackball ala Sidekick/BlackBerry. Something is going on with Google on this one, but everyone at Samsung is tight-lipped. I’ll see how drunk I can get the folks here to glean some more info. ☺

Remember when I said I had my eye on the i450? Yeah, well, my mind hasn’t changed one bit. See the red scroll-wheel dealie on the left side? It doesn’t move, rather, it’s a touch sensitive ridge. When you get where you want to go (if you wanted to see all the artists or albums), you simply press down in the center of the arc and it jumps to that particular screen. The OS being S60 is phenomenal. The 2-megapixel camera is an added bonus as well as the FM radio, 3.5mm jack, and 2.4-inch screen as well as stereo Bluetooth. Great phone, just wish it were making it stateside.

Here we have the lovechild of Samsung and Bang & Olufsen. It’s a quirky looking phone that most would think is upside down. We typically see scroll-wheels set at the bottom of the handset rather than the top. Sound quality on the Serenata is superb. It definitely improves on the Serene. The UI is all done from the scroll-wheel or on the touch screen, which is limited to firing up the music player or bringing up the three main apps that are used. Tapping the center of the screen brings up an old rotary phone icon with which you use the scroll-wheel to input numbers.

I’ll admit that it’s not the easiest thing to use, but when scrolling through the menu anything related to the music player is highlighted in red and anything to do with the phone is highlighted in blue. I can’t vouch for phone quality and I certainly don’t see myself finding it to be the most ergonomic device either. It’s just weird, but as a music phone it’s probably the best device I’ve ever heard. With 4GB of internal memory you’ll be bumping your tunes in style.

The Armani phone from Samsung was revealed weeks ago, but today we had a chance for some hands on and I’m very impressed. It’s small form factor, 3.44×2.14×0.41-inch, and touch screen UI are quite intuitive and easy to use. The 2.6-inch QVGA touch screen has haptic feedback for everything, but it shuts off when you’re dialing a number, which is something I found rather strange. Activating the camera is simple with an external button and to take the photo or record video you simply touch the screen. Easy, right? The only thing I didn’t like about the phone is that the main menu is somewhat difficult to navigate through because you might not know what icons pertain to what function. You have to press whatever icon interests you to see what sub-menu it brings up. You’ve already read all the facts and we know you just want to see pictures, so hit the jump.

Hello from Seoul, South Korea. Well, I landed in Seoul’s Incheon airport last night and throughout this week I’ll be bringing you some exclusive Samsung news as well as everything else the motherland has to offer. Bet you didn’t know Samsung made cars.

If you’re in or around Seoul then feel free to shoot me an e-mail, peterha at crunch gear dot com. Stay tuned for some really cool stuff, folks.

Just landed an hour ago. I’m here with Samsung suckling on the sweet teat of junket whoredom. In all honesty, this should be a pretty cool trip as we’re going to see WiMAX in action, their Mobile TV solutions, and visit KES 2006, which is kind of like CES but Korean. To whet your appetites, I’ve got some pictures of the R-MCA-05-0038 phone – the June? – with built-in DMB TV. The quality is excellent, although I picked up some “teach yourself English” program that featured teens who kept repeating “The wine is weak! Ha ha ha!”

I’m pretty beat tonight, but I’ll have plenty of goodies this week to show you including video and images of hot stuff we’ll never see in the U.S.

If you’re a CG reader in Korea, drop me a line at john at crunchgear dot com. We’ll have an informal meet-up and discuss this whole “Wine is weak” thing.