Samsung's touchscreen SGH-Z610 sees FCC approval

We don't want to get anyone too excited here seeing how the SGH-Z610's FCC test report seems to indicate it lacks UMTS 850 / 1900, but when we catch wind of pretty much anything with a touchscreen and an antenna, our ears tend to perk up. The glossy white, uh, block (there doesn't seem to be a sliding keypad beneath) has a touch of Appleness to it, offering what appear to be touch-sensitive music controls on the front, a screen, front-facing cam for video calling, and not much else to interrupt its flowing lines. Flipping through the user's manual, it looks like finger gestures are used to control the phone's basic functions -- we're not convinced, but if Samsung wants to ship a few of these our way, we'd be happy to give it a whirl.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 29th 2006 8:12PM]

That's awesome. I'd want one of those, as my secondary UMTS phone.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 29th 2006 8:14PM]

To Engadget: After looking at the FCC reports, I see the phone is 900/1800/1900 with 2100 UMTS. You guys saw 1900 GSM and mistaked it for 1900 UMTS. GSM 1900 is the only band shown in the report because it is the only band on the device used in the US which is all the FCC cares about, not overseas bands.

[Chris Ziegler Posted Aug 29th 2006 11:03PM]

Jordan - thanks for the catch! Too bad it's still not US-friendly, eh? I've updated the post.

Chris

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 30th 2006 1:00AM]

if its not blackberry its not good enough in the US ;-P

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 30th 2006 2:47AM]

This product seesm to be good and interesting... hope to have one soon :).

[PEZ Posted Aug 30th 2006 8:53AM]

SAMSUNG will never break big time in the US market. So, dont worry about it.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 30th 2006 11:22AM]

What if it actually is Apple's iPhone 'disguised' as a Samsung phone, just like the Zune? The play button is very similar to the 3G ipod's...

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 13th 2007 7:46PM]

Looks like Apple will have a bit more competition for their iPhone from this little number. As with Apple, a lot depends on how well the virtual keyboard/thumbboard works.

Rumored specs of Z610

- Expandable memory
- 2-megapixel camera with video capture opportunity, frontal camera for video calls
* Bluetooth A2DP supporting stereo sound in headphones
* Printing to a USB-printer
* SMS/MMS
* Media player (*.3gp, *.mp4, *.rm / *.mp3, *.aac, *.ra, *.wma, *.mp4, *.audio, *.spm)
* Wire remote control
* Documents (*.doc, *.ppt, *.xls, *.pdf, *.txt, *.swf, *.svg, and *.svgz)
* Other functions: alarm clock, JAVA games, calendar, voice recorder, SyncML, WEB browser.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 29th 2007 12:27AM]

To me it looks like a copy of the Neonode N2.... especially the user interface!