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Samsung has made two introductions from the floor of CTIA Wireless 2009: the Samsung Mondi WiMax-enabled handheld and the Samsung Instinct s30 smartphone.
The attention-grabbing Mondi features a 4.3-inch full touch-screen with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface-also on the Samsung S5600 Behold, Eternity and Omnia-which offers one-touch access to customizable online widgets, such as weather or news applications.
A four-row, full QWERTY keyboard with an optical mouse slides out from behind the length of the rectangular screen. The Mondi runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, and comes preloaded with Opera 9.5 and the Route66 GPS application for turn-by-turn directions.
And, perhaps most distinctive of all, its connectivity options include Wi-Fi and WiMax-which Clearwire recently announced it would expand to eight more U.S. cities in 2009 and at least four more in 2010. Which is all the head start WiMax will have until Verizon Wireless begins rolling out its rival 4G technology, LTE.
Pricing and carrier information for the Mondi have yet to be released.
The Samsung Instinct s30 is said to be a slimmer, updated version of the Samsung Instinct-full stop-which came out at CTIA last year. Its updated features include built-in instant messaging; an improved Web browsing experience using either the “default” browser or Opera Mini 4.2; and 16GB of external memory.
It will be available April 19 from Sprint for $129.99 with a two-year contract.