Samsung announces its Omnia W smartphone

KOREAN HARDWARE GIANT Samsung has unveiled its Omnia W smartphone, which will run Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Mango.

This handset will be Samsung's first to run the WP7 Mango operating system. It will be powered by a 1.4GHz processor and have 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage and a 3.7in Super AMOLED display.

Simon Stanford, Managing Director of mobile at Samsung said, "We are extremely excited about the Samsung Omnia W. As our first device to feature the latest Windows Phone update, we have ensured that it has something for everyone whether they are using it for personal or work purposes; from the superb screen quality to the huge range of apps and multimedia available,"

Other specifications include a 5MP rear facing camera, a front facing VGA webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1500mAh battery and 25GB of Windows Live Skydrive cloud storage for free.

The Omnia W will be 10.9mm thick and weigh 115g.

Samsung's handset will go up against the likes of HTC's recently announced Radar. That has a screen that's 0.1in larger than Samsung's and it will be available next month for around £350.

The Omnia W might be one of only a handful of WP7 Mango based phones that we see from Samsung after the firm said that it will only support Windows Phone until the end of 2012.

We'll have to wait a little while for the phone, as it is being launched in Italy first at the end of October then in other European and global markets afterwards. It joins the growing list of handsets that will tip up before Nokia's first WP7 Mango phone. µ