Last week Samsung announced their first cell phone to work with the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology. Samsung P200 is the company’s first handset to have Wi-Fi functionality.

The idea behind that technology is simple enough - when there is an accessible Wi-Fi hotspot near you, for example in your home, office or university, or simply in the street, the UMA-enabled device would connect to it and use the broadband connection for making and accepting calls and sending and receiving data. It resembles a lot using wireless VoIP-telephony through your GSM mobile phone. Things get even better though, since the UMA enabled phone would also be able to use regular GSM base stations as any normal mobile phone would. The handset would be able to change connections between the licensed cellular radio access network and the unlicensed IP network seamlessly even in the middle of a call without even the user noticing.

All you need to use the new technology is a UMA-enabled device, an operator that supports UMA, and an Internet broadband connection that you can access via Wi-Fi (WLAN). The most important difference from the widely known VoIP technology is that UMA is after all tightly linked to the mobile radio network, which is used for routing, authentication and billing. A call initiated using the Wi-Fi interface after all reaches the 2G core network through the UMA Network and once the signal is transferred, it becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the cellular traffic. Do not throw your hopes for free calls through the window just yet since the technology allows the UMA-enabled devices to be used as regular VoIP handsets. But it’s of course up to the manufacturer to decide whether to block that functionality or not.

The Samsung P200 has the following specifications:

The UMA technology is sure to become popular since the UMA Consortium currently includes leading service providers, infrastructure suppliers and handset manufacturers like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, etc. Currently, Nokia is the only manufacturer besides Samsung to have announced a UMA-enabled device - the Nokia 6136 handset, which is still under development.

The Samsung SGH-P200 is expected to be commercially available very soon.

Link:
GSM Arena

Samsung SGH-P200 UMA-enabled handset

Motorola has just announced four new additions to its range of mobile phones. These are Motorola KRZR K1 and Motorola RIZR. Both phones support A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). The other two are HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) handsets, the first to be manufactured by the company - Motorola RAZZ maxx and Motorola V3xx.

Motorola KRZR K1
The Motorola KRZR has the following features:
- Dimension: 103 x 42 x 16 mm
- Dipslay: 65K TFT colours, 176 x 220 pixels
- Weight: 102g
- 2 Megapixel camera
- MP3 player
- A2DP (Stereo music over bluetooth headset support)
- MicroSD card slot
- Quad-band clamshell
Other features of Motorola KRZR K1 includes incorporation of the Motorola Screen 3 technology which allows for viewing news and sports scores directly onto the phone’s standby screen.

Motorola KRZR handset

Motorola RIZR
- Dimension: 106 x 46 x 16 mm
- Dipslay: 256K TFT colours, 176 x 220 pixels
- Weight: 115g
- 2 Megapixel camera
- A2DP (Stereo bluetooth headset support)
- MicroSD card slot
- MP3 player
Motorola RIZR is the first GSM slider of Motorola.

Motorola RIZR handset

Motorola RAZR V3xx
The Motorola RAZR V3xx featuring 3.5G technology, a top data transfer speed, has the following features:
- Dimension: 104 x 53 x 16 mm
- Dipslay: 256K TFT colours, 240 x 320 pixels
- Weight: 102g
- 1.3 Megapixel camera
- MP3 player
- MicroSD card slot

Motorola RAZR V3xx handset

Motorola RAZR maxx
This second HSDPA phone by Motorola is the most technologically advanced of the four phones. It has a secondary VGA video calls camera, and also supports EDGE. It has the folowing features:
- Dimension: 104 x 53 x 15 mm
- Weight 105 g
- Dipslay: 256K TFT colours, 240 x 320 pixels
Second external 65k colours, 120 x 160 pixels
- Weight: 105g
- 2 Megapixel camera
- MP3 player
- MicroSD card slot
Other featyre of Motorola RAZR maxx is a stylish touch sensitive music keys for operating the built-in MP3 player.

All four Motorola phones are expected to be commercially available by the second half of 2006.

Motorola RAZR maxx handset

Samsung has officially announced their new QWERTY smartphone SGH-i320, after a long delay. The industry already has knowledge of the smartphone as the phone was unintentionally put on display February this year during the first day of 3GSM Barcelona.

The Windows Mobile 5.0 OS smartphone weighs 95g and 11.5mm thick. Having similar form factor with Motorola Q and Nokia E61, the i320 has the advantage of being the smallest and lightest among them. It boasts of 2.2″ 65k colour display with a QVGA resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, with 1.3 Megapixel camera in addition to integrated dual speakers.

The specifications of the Samsung SGH-i320 are as detailed below:

Since the phone supports push email, frequent email users would be the one to benefit the most from the new smartphone, allowing exchanging of emails in real time. The QWERTY keyboard is also an advantage in this regard, as it will facilitate its use.

The Samsung SGH-i320 will be commercially available in Europe by the end of July 2006.

Samsung SGH-i320 Smartphone