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Samsung’s not giving up on Windows Phone, with a new mobile boasting Full HD resolution showing up in a Bluetooth certification document, spotted by Samsung fan blog Sammy Today.
As well as the desirable 1,920×1,080-pixel screen, the phone uses Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser — so it must be a Windows Phone, because you can’t get IE on anything else. Its screen size is marked as “-5”, which we can probably take to mean 5 inches.
The only other tidbit of information on the Samsung SM-W750V — it’ll be marketed as something marginally more snappy, perhaps with the Ativ brand — is that it has 4G LTE, another marker that it’s not a budget model.
Samsung’s top-notch 2013 phones, the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3, both featured Full HD screens of 5 inches or more, and magnificent they were too. This effort might not quite match up to the Korean company’s high-end Android phones for this year, but it should be pretty special.
It hasn’t sold a Windows Phone in the UK since 2012’s underwhelming Ativ S, however, so it’s possible any release may skip this country entirely. “Samsung does not comment on rumour or speculation,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Is Microsoft picking up the tab?
The news follows a rumour, started by Russian tech tipster Eldar Murtazin, that Microsoft will pay Samsung and other countries billions of dollars to make and market new Windows Phones.
MS will shell out $1.2bn to Samsung, $0.6bn to Huawei and $0.5bn to Sony, according to Murtazin — all for just a single handset from each, apparently to make its ecosystem more attractive to developers.
If all three produce really great Windows Phones, and shell out on advertising to pull in punters, it stands to reason app makers would take the Marketplace more seriously. Murtazin doesn’t share his source, so there’s no reason to put too much faith in this tidbit, but it’ll certainly make 2014 a good deal more interesting if some tasty Windows Phones come out. File it under: rumour, promising.
Are you after a high-end mobile with Microsoft’s snazzy software? Would you pick a Full HD Samsung over something from Nokia, perhaps? Give a window into your thoughts down in the comments, or over on our high-resolution Facebook page.
Update 5.40pm: Added (no) comment from Samsung.
