Samsung targets Android hotspot with M-100S

The handset makers are lining up their goodies for Mobile World Congress, and Samsung keeps promising the biggest splash. It has already outed ‘Galaxy 2’ and now we see another Android high end, the less snappily named M-100S. This will break the monopoly of Google Nexus One on the latest Android release, 2.1.

The phone will ship first in Korea, with SKT next month, but seems destined to go global in April. It has an impressive spec sheet for an open Android phone, though its multimedia hardware is less powerful than on proprietary Samsung offerings like the Jet with its 12-megapixel camera. The new product comes with the firm’s trademark AMOLED bright display, at 3.7-inches in size and 854 x 480 pixels. The camera is 5-mp with 720p video recording.

The handset plays one-upmanship not only with its OS but its Wi-Fi connection – it is one of the first smartphones to include the fast 802.11n version. However, this is not a gigahertz device like Nexus One or the Jet. It sports the same processor as the Samsung Moment, clocked at 800MHz – fast, but not blistering for top end media apps, though kinder on battery life (which hopefully is better than on the Galaxy).

Other features are standard in a phone of this class – HSPA up to 7.2Mbps, GPS, DivX, accelerometer. 3.5mm headphone jack and digital compass. Less obvious is a T-DMB TV tuner for Korean mobile TV, which will be changed to DVB-H, the European standard, for launch here.

The phone runs Samsung’s own TouchWiz widgets based user interface rather than the more Google-oriented UI of the Galaxy. TouchWiz will be updated itself at the Barcelona event.

Meanwhile, for Galaxy 2, Samsung is likely to break faith with Qualcomm Snapdragon and use its own ARM-based gigahertz processor, Hummingbird. This was developed through last year with Intrinsity and represents a new push by Samsung’s semiconductor unit to push into the growing area of apps processors for mobile devices.