The SPH-M4300 will become available this month in Korea and features a 1.3-megapixel camera and a 2.8-inch LCD. The Seoul-based manufacturer said the device runs on the Pocket PC operating system from Microsoft.
South Korea is, of course, a CDMA market, so the cellular air interface on the SPH-M4300 will be incompatible with GSM. Samsung is making a big push to regain its number 2 status in the worldwide handset market, which it lost to Motorola in the last quarter of last year, and one would expect it to ready a GSM equivalent of the WiFi-enabled phone for the coming months.
Samsung is clearly testing the waters with products in Korea that it can then take to the international market. After last year launching a handset with a hard disk drive for the Korean market, earlier this month at CeBIT it unveiled the first HDD- fitted phone in the European market, the SGH i300, with no less the 3GB of mass storage and a Windows OS, details of which are yet to be announced. The new phone, available in the second half of this year, will be aimed at the online music market.
This is not actually the first mobile handset to be WiFi-enabled. The Nokia 9500 Communicator has that connectivity, as does the HP iPAQ H6340 in Europe and the H6315 in the States. ODM manufacturer HTC also produces devices for some of its customers such as T-Mobile.
