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Samsung Launches A Slew Of iPhone Wannabes

This week saw something ridiculous, like three different touch screen devices from Samsung hit the market or be announced. The Delve, the Behold, and the Eternity bring a mixture of media and smartphone-like features complete with touch screen input.

I can barely keep up with all these new phones from Samsung. The South Korean electronics giant just keeps churning them out one after the other.

The Delve, Behold, and Eternity all have something big in common. That commonality is the TouchWiz user interface. TouchWiz is a second-generation touch UI from Samsung that is meant to (sort of) compete with the iPhone and Android UIs. It offers a touch input with a dock full of applications to one side. You can drag-and-drop applications or shortcuts or whatever you want to the phone top to customize its appearance and usability.

I've used this interface extensively. While it is no iPhone UI, it is a far cry better than what Samsung offered with its Croix interface, and the interface on the (stillborn) Samsung Instinct. I like how easily it is customized and made to fit the users wants and/or needs.

Now, about the phone's themselves...

The Delve has a three-inch touch display with a software keyboard and haptic feedback. It carries an EVDO radio for 3G data, Bluetooth with A2DP stereo, and GPS. It has a 2-megapixel camera with video capture, 3.5-mm headset jack, supports microSD cards up to 8 GB, and has a full HTML Web browser for surfing the Web. The Delve is being offered by Alltel and U.S. Cellular.

The Behold also has a full-QWERTY on-screen keyboard with haptic feedback similar to the Delve, but it features a 5-megapixel camera with flash that can capture video. The Behold's camera is excellent, and Samsung did a good job of incorporating touch features into the camera software. It has quad-band GSM/EDGE radios as well as 1,700/2,100-MHz 3G radios, which makes the Behold compatible with T-Mobile's 3G network. The Behold also has a full Web browser, stereo Bluetooth, and GPS. The Behold is available only from T-Mobile.

Next up is the Eternity, which was recently announced by AT&T. The Eternity has quad-band GSM/EDGE and dual-band 850/1,900-MHz 3G radios on board for surfing AT&T's 3G network. It also carries GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP stereo, and a 3-megapixel camera with Video Share. Video Share lets you beam a live video feed to one other phone. The Eternity has an on-screen full-touch QWERTY keyboard and an accelerometer. It also is another phone that is compatible with AT&T's Mobile TV service, which uses the MediaFLO network for live broadcast TV.

All three of these devices are capable feature phones, but none of them set the bar too high.

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