By Martin Vedris
SYDNEY: Samsung Australia has the license to tailor its marketing message in the local market and the company has chosen the term ICON as the range name of four of its touchscreen phones. It’s a clever term for these new smartphones.
Apple can dispute its claim to the terms iPod and iPhone but it can’t monopolise the use of the term ICON, which Samsung has chosen as the range name for it’s new touchscreen smartphones — the Preston, the Omnia, the HD and the Galaxy.
Interestingly, iCon was also the name of the warts and all book on Steve Jobs that Apple famously tried to ban — talk about a great publicity campaign for the book.
Samsung has sent Apple a clear message with its ICON range though — we’ve got touchscreen phones well and truly covered.
The Samsung Preston is an entry-level touchscreen phone with Samsung’s TouchWiz User Interface. It features a Smart Unlock that allows the user to simultaneously unlock the phone and navigate to a specific menu function by drawing a large letter of the alphabet on the screen. For example, you can allocate the letter ‘C’ for calls, and by drawing a ‘C’ on the screen it will open up at the numeric keypad.
A new Samsung Omnia is on the way and it incorporates WiFi, a 5-megapixel camera, video functionality, music, and it uses the Windows Mobile 6.1 professional operating system that will be upgradeable to the new Windows Mobile 6.5. It also features a very clear 3.7-inch AMOLED screen.
The HD phone is Samsung’s multimedia/entertainment flagship phone. It offers HD video recording, DLNA connectivity, a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, Symbian operating system and an 8-megapixel camera.
Highlights of the Galaxy — Samsung’s first phone using the Android operating system — include a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, a 5-megapixel camera, WiFi, access to Android applications and seamless interaction with Google’s features such as maps, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk, as well as YouTube.
All four of these Samsung ICON phones feature expandable memory and Bluetooth.