Seemingly out of nowhere, Samsung’s unveiled an update to its HSDPA iPhone-rival (the F700), due to be released next month.
Like the F700, the new F490 (right) is designed as a fully-featured multimedia touch screen phone boasting a 3.2-inch widescreen display and this time, a five-megapixel camera (The F700 only had 3.2-megapixels).
In fact the F490’s screen is so big, there’s literally only room for a two keys at the bottom of the screen. It also has haptic-feedback for vibrating responses to your touches.
The five-megapixel camera has a built-in LED flash but no autofocus – apparently the first five-megapixel cameraphone to lack this feature.
Media-wise you can watch a huge range of video formats on the screen, even the MPEG4 clips you can record with the camera. For storage, there’s 130MB of memory, with a microSD card slot.
Naturally, you can play music on the F490 and a pleasant change, this is a music phone with a standard 3.5mm audio jack for headphones.
It looks like the F700, but is slimmer and has got a lot more going on underneath the sexy exterior. And how much will all this cost? Well, from next month Samsung will sell it for €530 (around £400) Sim-free, so expect it to be free on more expensive contracts.






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