Every year at CTIA, the show’s organizers hold an Emerging Tech Awards contest to pick the best products at the show. Samsung entered its previously announced Strive and Sunburst phones in the contest, but then it threw the SCH-U820 into the ring.
When we arrived in Las Vegas, the SCH-U820 was nowhere to be found, and Samsung representatives declined to say why. However, we’re going to tell you about the phone anyway. The SCH-U820 has a three-inch touch screen that uses Samsung’s TouchWiz 2.0 interface. Below the display are the standard navigation controls. Behind the display, Samsung hides a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
The phone’s features are solidly midrange with a focus on messaging and e-mail. Besides text and multimedia messaging, the handset supports for POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail accounts, syncing for Microsoft Exchange, and has instant-messaging application. You’ll also find a 3.2-megapixel camera, a full HTML Web browser, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a microSD card slot.
The SCH-U820 should be available later this year. Samsung won’t say which carrier will get it, but any Samsung phone with “SCH” in the name usually ends up at Verizon Wireless.