Samsung vient de dévoiler ce matin le Soul, un nouveau slide phone HSDPA (compatible 7.2Mbps) bien sympa, avec entre autres fonctionnalités, un APN de 5MegaPix avec zoom numérique et stabilisateur d’image, un touch pad nouvelle génération, Bluetooth, radio FM… Plus d’infos la semaine prochaine à Barcelone, en attendant, voici le Press Release.

Seoul, Korea, Feb 8, 2008 – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a leading mobile phone and telecommunication equipment provider, today announced the launch of ‘Soul’, Samsung’s new flagship product for 2008. Soul will officially make its debut during next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung named ‘Soul’’ to honor the completion of its exclusive ‘Ultra Edition’ series of handsets which offer this perfect balance of design and features.

Soul, an abbreviation of “The Spirit Of Ultra”, will appeal to style-conscious users who are not willing to compromise between design and technology and search out the best of the best for inspiration and stimulation to enrich their lives.

Soul will be supported by a major global advertising campaign and will be available in European countries from April.

“We believe that Soul is the answer for today’s style-conscious consumers, excited by outstanding quality design and performance,” said Geesung Choi, President of Samsung’s Telecommunication Business.

“Soul is set to continue the success of past Ultra Edition handsets, such as D900 and U600, and will further enhance Samsung’s leadership in the premium phone category.”

Soul is the ultimate essence of mobile; a slim, lightweight and stylish product yet still boasting all the essential functions in one single device. This product, a sleek combination of highly styled design and functionality, is a triumph of extreme opposite values, ‘Portability’ and ‘Multi-function.’

Adapts to You
Soul enhances the usability for the user with features that adapt to the user depending on the application. With Magical Touch by DaCP™, navigation indicators on the keypad of the phone change according to the user’s needs, making navigation of the menus simple, intuitive and direct. The navigation panel’s icons change according to function.

For example, when in music mode, music related icons will light up on the navigation indicators. When in camera mode, camera related icons such as zoom and brightness icons will appear.

Soul also offers a new series of graphic user interfaces (GUI) providing three different options for users. With this Thematic UI, users can change the UI according to their personal tastes. Additionally, users can create their own skins with the on-handset User Created Skin (UCS) setup. Display skins are customizable with various options such as background images, fonts and colors.

Art of Less
Continuing the look of Samsung’s popular ‘Ultra Edition’ series with extreme minimalism in a slim design, Soul has a full metal body with a premium look and feel with a natural color and hairline texture.

“The fundamental direction of the design concept development of Soul was to keep ‘the epitome of self-discipline’ by minimizing all the factors to a simple while beautiful device,” Minhyouk Lee, a senior mobile device designer said.

Hidden Depths
At only 12.9mm thin, it is equipped with professional photographic functions including a 5 megapixel camera. Soul answers today’s customer needs as the perfect digital camera and multimedia mobile combined into one single device. Features such as face detection, image stabilizer and Wide Dynamic Range (WDR), which are very up-to-date features even in today’s digital cameras, are also equipped in Soul.

Users can enjoy super-fast Internet access through the 7.2 Mbps High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) browser and share images or video taken with the phone. With 7.2 Mpbs HSDPA, users can also download songs at a faster speed compared to average 3G networks. Soul is also perfect for music listeners with features such as Music library navigation, digital power amplifier by ICEpower® technology by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower.