Samsung Electronics today unveiled the Omnia W, its first smartphone running on the updated Mango version of Windows Phone.
Samsung plans to launch the Omnia W in Italy starting late next month, and eventually through Europe, Latin America, Southeast, and Southwest Asia. The company didn’t provide any date for a U.S. arrival.
Samsung was among the early supporters of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, which has only seen moderate success during the first go-around. The Mango update of the software, however, has won critical praise, although it’s unclear if that will translate to commercial success.
Based on its specifications and hardware, the phone is more of a mass-market device.
The Omnia W has a 1.4GHz processor, 512MB of memory, 8GB of storage, and a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED display.
It has a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash in the rear, and a front-facing VGA camera for video calls. It also allows for 720p video recording and playback. Other features that are standard in smartphones now are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth capabilities, an accelerometer, and light, proximity, magnetometer, and gyroscope sensors.
While the specs are solid, they still fall short of the Galaxy S II, Samsung’s flagship smartphone that runs on Google’s Android platform.