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At the CTIA Wireless show, Samsung unveiled only the second mobile handset to support BlackBerry Connect, RIM's solution for bringing push e-mail to non-BlackBerry devices, for the U.S. market. What sets the SGH-T719 (see top image) apart from the very PDA-like Nokia 9300 is that the Samsung is very much in the vein of a traditional cell phone, and a small one at that.

Unlike the silver Nokia, the black T719 is a flip phone, which doesn't leave much room for a QWERTY thumb-keyboard. Rather, the Samsung sports the same SureType keyboard/keypad hybrid as RIM's more phone-like 7100 BlackBerry series.

For text entry, each key supports two letters, while predictive text software helps users accurately input text. The software's word database encompasses tens of thousands of words plus the user's address book. As with a word processor's spell-checker, you can add more words to it as well.

Additional features for the EDGE-enabled, quad-band T719 include a 2.12-inch, 262K-color 176 x 220 screen, as well as a voice recognition, a speakerphone, 1.3 megapixel camera for picture and video, and a media player.

According to Samsung, the T719 should hit the streets this September from an as-of-yet un-named carrier. Reports say it could be T-Mobile, however.

Another Samsung phone promises to set another standard, but this time for size. The 9.8 millimeter-thick T509 will earn the title ‘thinnest handset in the U.S.’ when T-Mobile releases it sometime next month. The T509 is slimmer than both Motorola's 11-millimeter SLVR, which itself carries less around the waste than the extremely popular 14-millimeter RAZR. Alas, the 7.9-millimeter EV-K100 - announced just a couple of weeks ago in Korea - is still the thinnest of them all.


                                                 T509

Additional T509 features include a 262k screen, Bluetooth, EDGE, and a mere VGA camera.

Samsung also unveiled the T709, a black slider phone expected to be the first handset in the U.S. to offer Wi-Fi/cellular UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) connectivity, again for T-Mobile, which is the carrier with the largest investment in hot spots worldwide. UMA is a dual mode technology that allows GSM carriers to seamlessly hand off calls between cellular and Wi-Fi networks.


                    T709

This means your phone will switch from one type of network to the other in the middle of a call without you noticing. Walk in off the street within range of Wi-Fi hot spot or the access point at work or home and your saving minutes, while the carrier is saving bandwidth.

The T709, which weighs only 3.3 ounces,also supports EDGE networking, has a 262K-color TFT screen, dual stereo speakers, a 1.3-megpixel camera, and a host of multimedia features.

It is due to ship during the second quarter.

And then there's the zx20, expected to be the one of the first High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) phones supporting 1.8 Mbps in the U.S. HSDPA is an advancement of the UMTS technology used by GSM carriers, mainly in Europe, to offer 3G services.

Cingular Wireless, the only real candidate for the zx20 in this country, skipped pure UMTS (also supported by the zx20) and went straight to HSDPA when it began rolling out its high-speed network last December.


              zx20

Features of the quad-band flip phone include a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash, video/audio streaming capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, speakerphone, video conferencing, MicroSD card slot, and 262K color TFT.

The phone measures 3.46 x 1.89 x 1.02 inches and weighs 3.9 ounces.

Another phone destined for Cingular is the d407, a follow up to a previous model which supported America's largest operator's fledgling push-to-talk initiative.

A lot of folks are keen on the a930, which is a sleek-looking phone with multimedia controls on the outside, so the handset can stay closed when users play music or video. It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, speakerphone and microSD slot.


                    a930

The phone, which measures 3.59 x 1.89 x 0.98 inches, and weighs 3.98 ounces, should ship during the second quarter.