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Samsung first to unveil Windows Phone 8 smartphone

by Mark Tyson on 30 August 2012, 10:30

Tags: Samsung (005935.KS), Windows Phone

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qablmf

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Samsung has become the first Windows Phone 8 manufacturer to show its cards. The company has officially announced the Samsung ATIV S at the IFA event in Berlin. The new smartphone is also featured in a blog post on the official Windows Phone Blog which calls the ATIV S “equal parts powerhouse and head turner”.

Samsung ATIV S specifications

  • 4.8” HD Super AMOLED display
  • Corning Gorilla Glass 2
  • 1.5Ghz dual-core Snapdragon processor
  • 1GB of onboard RAM
  • 8MP autofocus rear camera and 1.9MP front-facing camera
  • 16GB or 32GB onboard storage + MicroSD storage expansion slot
  • 137.2mm x 70.5mm x 8.7mm – under 9mm thick
  • Body made largely of brushed aluminium
  • 2300mAh battery “to keep you rocking all day”
  • NFC
  • Expected in shops October/November

The ATIV S is following the Samsung smartphone trend of screens getting larger and phone bodies getting thinner. The hardware specs are impressive for Windows Phone as up until WP8 the hardware was restricted to single core processors, no SD card storage and 800x480 resolution displays. Actually the above ATIV S spec list looks a lot like the Samsung Galaxy S III Android flagship phone.

The Windows Button on the ATIV S is a physical button and IS flanked by the usual Windows phone buttons back and search in capacitive form. Looking at the design, it would be easier to recognise this phone in a crowd from the back with the brushed aluminium and speaker grille. However from the front the look is rather generic; I’d rather not say what it reminds me of!

Speaking to PCPro, Sid Parakh, an analyst at investment firm McAdams Wright Ragen said of the new Samsung ATIV S “Microsoft or Windows never got their best teams, never got their best designs, just because Android was doing so well. With the change in the legal environment, there's a case to be made that Samsung will likely shift some of those resources to broaden out or diversify their own exposure.” We covered the AppSung legal tussles a few days ago.

We all expect Nokia to unveil some new Windows Phone 8 devices on 5th September. Many are anticipating a device with a PureView camera built-in and possibly a Samsung Galaxy Note rival powered by WP8.



HEXUS Forums :: 33 Comments

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Very smart. Looks like MicroSD is going to be standard on WP8, which is good news. Snapdragon S4 (Krait) has finally arrived! With Nokia and HTC launching phones in September too, its going to be a very interesting month.
Hmmm might just move from Android
http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativ_tab.html

It's their windows RT Tab I'm looking at.

It's got USB+HDMI out all there.

It's something I could take with me on holiday, offload images from my camera to external USB HDD with. In 520grams, with a simple touch interface…. Nice.
Spec looks good - especially the uSD support.

Designwise though I'm less than ecstatic - the back looks suspiciously like an HTC One and it's not exactly “pretty” is it. I think I'll pass on this one and wait to see what Nokia can come up with - even a respin of the current Lumia's would be a better “looker” than this.

Just comparing the front face in the picture to my S3 and it's identical - bar the larger “Windows” button that the WP8 device has.
crossy
Designwise though I'm less than ecstatic - the back looks suspiciously like an HTC One and it's not exactly “pretty” is it. I think I'll pass on this one and wait to see what Nokia can come up with - even a respin of the current Lumia's would be a better “looker” than this.
http://qkme.me/3qp16r

I have nothing against them using some of the S3 tooling for it, so long as its cheap.

I don't like the ‘Andriod Armsrace’ of quadcore this and that. Whilst its not a fair comparison because of screen resolution, but hell I'll make it anyway, my Nexus 7 tablet with its Quad Core Tegra 3 setup (iirc 1.5ghz!) is slower, constistantly jerky etc. My Omnia 7 with its single core 800mhz snapdragon is not. Both appear to be memory bottlenecked loading a game.

I don't like that, its expensive, drains battery and is simply used to hide bad programming.