Basking
Ridge, N.J. – Samsung and Verizon Wireless teamed up to introduce two firsts
for the U.S. market.
One is the Continuum, an Android 2.1 smartphone with the
industry’s first scrolling ticker to display live RSS news feeds, incoming text
messages and emails, social-network updates, and missed calls. The information
appears on an LCD screen below the phone’s primary screen.
The other phone, the dual-hinge clamshell
Zeal, is the first phone with an E Ink keyboard that displays a QWERTY keypad
when opened in landscape mode and a numeric keypad when flipped open in
portrait mode. The messaging phone’s vertical numeric keypad can be switched by
the user to an alpha-only keypad, and the landscape QWERTY keyboard can be
switched to a numeric keypad with symbols.
The Continuum will be available to consumers
on Nov. 18 at $199 after $100 mail-in rebate through Verizon’s stores and website
with two-year contract that includes a data plan. Preordering starts Nov. 11.
The Zeal will be available on Nov. 11 for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate
two-year customer agreement. Both will
also be available to third-party retailers to sell.
The Continuum, a Samsung Galaxy-S class
Android phone, will be Verizon’s second Galaxy smartphone after the Samsung
Fascinate. The Continuum features 3.4-inch WVGA Super-AMOLED full touchscreen
with no hard keyboard. The primary screen is complemented by a 1.8-inch Super-AMOLED
LCD screen that’s about 0.25 inches in height. Both displays are capacitive
touchscreens.
Users set the ticker to display one of the
following feeds at a time or a mix of feeds: RSS feeds, social-network feeds,
voicemail indicator, the sender and subject line of emails, the first few words
of a text message with the sender’s name, the phone number of missed calls,
weather alerts and Google Talk chats. On the ticker display, users can press an
RSS-feed headline, an email, a text message and the like to open up the full
RSS story, email or text message on the phone’s primary screen. If Verizon’s cloud-based navigation service
is in use, driving prompts and other information appear on the ticker, with a
map appearing on the primary screen.
The Continuum also features a grip sensor,
which lights up the ticker display when the phone is picked up by its sides
while the device is in locked mode.
Other Continuum features include Samsung’s
1GHz Hummingbird processor, high-definition 720p video capture, included 8GB MicroSD
memory card, Verizon hot spot service, and a 5-megapixel camera with dedicated
hard camera button and flash. Samsung’s Media Hub will be available at a later
date to enable Wi-Fi downloading of movies for purchase and rent as well as TV
shows for purchase.
The Samsung Zeal Microsoft Office Exchange and
features 2-megapixel autofocusing camera/camcorder with night and panorama
shot; stereo Bluetooth; and a Social Beat widget that provides a single point
for accessing social-networking sites and more than 50 news, sports and
entertainment feeds. It’s also compatible with Verizon’s cloud-based VZ
Navigator service.
Messaging options include Mobile IM, Mobile
Chat, Mobile Email and Mobile Web Email. A MicroSD card slot supports 32GB cards
sold separately.
