Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition mobile phone launched

Samsung has launched its first handset of 2009 with the new Samsung Tocco Ultra edition. The Samsung Tocco was one of the most selling handsets from Samsung in 2008, so one must not be bemused as they released a few pre-production units in the U.K.

Photo: Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition slider phone with AMOLED touchscreen

The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition mobile phone is available in a hardened-red and silver colour – we do not know if other colours are available yet. The Tocco Ultra Edition features a 2.8 inch scratch free AMOLED touchscreen which is capable of showing 16 million colors and at a good resolution of 240 × 400 pixels.

The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition claim to have merged the full touchscreen with a familiar and convenient 3 x 4 keypad for the first time. This is a slider phone, and the keypad slides out as expected.

The camera features a powerful 8 mega pixel resolution with dual power LED flash and auto focus feature with Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and face detection. It is also reasonably nice to hold, with a thickness of just 12.7 millimeters.

The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition can record VGA video at 30 fps for smooth video. After shooting the video clip, audio dubbing, live dubbing and subtitles can be added to the video. The quality is so good that image capture is not a problem at all.

The Tocco’s audio facilities involve MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA playback with FM radio and RDS, all of which can be played back through a Bluetooth headset.

Samsung has given the Tocco Ultra Edition an internal memory capacity of 75 MB and an external memory card slot for Micro SDHC which can support up to 16 GB of data. The phone also features connectivity via Bluetooth v2.1, USB v2.0 and HSDPA internet access which can support an impressive maximum speed up to 7.2 Mbps.

The new Samsung mobile phone is set to receive a flagship marketing campaign encompassing a £5 million spend across out-of home, press and online advertising, experiential activity and PR, along with a strong focus on channel specific activity. The debut of the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition handset comes ahead of Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, where the handset will have a prominent place. The Tocco Ultra Edition is set to launch in UK stores in March 2009.