Samsung Announces Le Fleur Phones

Samsung has announced the 'Le Fleur' collection of phones designed for women. The phones have flowery patterns, similar to the Nokia L'Amour collection released a while ago. The range presently consists of the E420, E500 and the E570 phones, all of which are clamshells.

The E570 is reminiscent of the E530 in design, but the rear panel has the design that sets it apart. It is a tri-band, GSM/GPRS handset with a 1.8-inch 176x220 262K color TFT display, MP3 support, a 1.3-megapixel digital camera, a microSD/TransFlash memory card slot, Bluetooth, etc. The E570 doesn't seem to have EDGE network support, however, nor does it have an external sub-display.

The next one, the already launched E500, comes with genuine leather and metal elements. It is a tri-band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset and it has a 1.7-inch 262k color TFT display, an external 80x64 64k OLED display, a 1.3-megapixel digital camera, 60MB of shared internal memory, Bluetooth and USB.

Finally, the E420 has patterns on the top which light up when the phone rings. The E420 has a VGA (640x480) camera, a 2-inch 128x160 pixels and a 1-inch 96x96 display, both of which are 65k color OLED displays. There is no Bluetooth, no EDGE, and the internal memory is limited to just 2MB with no memory card slot.

Considering the not-so-successful range launched by Nokia, it would seem that the Samsung Le Fleur series may have taken a wrong avenue. Neither of these phones have an FM radio tuner, which is a deal-breaker for most women phone buyers in India. However, also considering that the new phones have a very subtle hint of style, they won't be as shunned as the L'Amour collection.

The Le Fleur series by Samsung should be available around November 2006. The E570 will have a price estimated at around Rs 20,500, the E500 at around Rs 15,000 and the E420 at Rs 10,500. There is no information about an Indian launch just yet.