Samsung T509, the latest thin mobile from Samsung, was launched for the US market yesterday, in a bold attack on Motorola's famous Motorazr line of slimphones. The Samsung T509 comes with Bluetooth wireless support, camera, polyphonic ring tones and MP3 capability, and is thinner than the current favorite Motorola SLVR. While the Samsung T509 is barely 9.8 mm thick, the Motorola SLVR is slightly thicker at 11.5 mm. The T509 mobile is a chocolate-bar shaped phone, with a sleek and trendy casing.

The Samsung T509 is a tri-band phone operating in 850/1800/1900 MHz with GPRS support. The T509 has large, vivid 262K-color screens, good for watching video clips and viewing photos. It has an integrated VGA camera with zoom and one-touch recording and playback. The phone features high-speed EDGE connectivity, good to browse and download data files fast.

The Samsung T509 was launched at the CTIA Wireless 2006 expo in Las Vegas. Samsung also revealed 12 more models, including clamshell models and one where the screen slides forward to reveal the keypad. Samsung is the world's third largest mobile phone maker.

According to analysts, the Samsung T509 mobile phone is Samsung's bold foray into the slimphone category, currently dominated by Motorola. Other leading cellphone makers including Nokia and LG almost completely misread the market potential for slim phones, a territory which was conquered with minimum effort by Motorola which was a laggard a few years back.

Not to be left behind, Samsung recently launched the P300 "Card", world's thinnest mobile phone at 8.9 mm -- but it is available only in Europe. The Samsung T509 will be the thinnest Americans can get when it comes to a mobile phone.

Samsung has also unveiled its models T709 and T719 at the expo. The T509 will start selling in May. The other models may take a while.

With the new models, Samsung becomes the only mobile phone maker in the US with presence in the three cellphone segments slider, bar and clamshell.