Samsung unveils touch and QWERTY handset, Galaxy Chat, for the socially active

Samsung's been a lot in the news these days for all the right reasons. After successfully unveiling and launching the Samsung Galaxy S III, the brand is now focussing their attention on a handset that will appeal to those who require a physical keyboard for all their typing purposes. Building up on the success of the Galaxy S III and aiming to launch handsets that cater to various audiences, Samsung a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, recently announced the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Chat. Designed for socially-active users, Galaxy Chat will allow its users to connect the people around them more easily. Galaxy Chat will be available from July starting in Spain and gradually rolled out to Europe, Latin America, Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia at a competitive price point. However, as of now, there are no details on the pricing yet for this touch and type handset.

Rollout to begin this month

The brand claims that the Samsung Galaxy Chat sports a sleek, compact design that complements your style. Powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the Galaxy Chat combines a 3-inch touch-screen with a full QWERTY keypad. With the Galaxy Chat, keeping up with your social life is easy and fun. Preloaded on the phone with its own dedicated launch key, Samsung’s ChatON communication service connects you and users from any phone platform into a single community, enabling spontaneous group chatting and messaging - with text, animations or images - in seconds. Samsung states that email is easy to use and manage thanks to predictive search capabilities, a more visual action bar for seamless navigation, and the ability to nest mail folders for quicker access and convenience. Whatever your data demands whether it is browsing, emailing or connecting socially, the Galaxy Chat also provides convenient settings that allow you to easily monitor and control data usage from month to month.

Samsung goes on to claim that navigating through the phone’s app menus is a breeze with more visual icons incorporating 3D effects, a fully customizable favorites tray, and widgets that you can resize or reposition according to your preferences. They state that you also have the ability to launch the camera or view your notifications directly from the lock screen; and multitasking is made even easier with features such as the ability to swipe apps to instantly dismiss them.

The Samsung Galaxy Chat comes preloaded with Game Hub. This feature is pre-packed with the most popular social games thereby providing endless entertainment. Samsung’s AllShare Play allows you to play multimedia from or to other connected devices. For added productivity, the Quick Office application offers easy viewing and editing of a wide range of Office documents, enabling you to work with Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. In addition, Samsung’s S Planner app allows you to manage your schedule in an easy and intuitive way.

Here is a quick look at some of the handsets highlighted features

• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung Touchwiz UX
• 3-inch QVGA TFT-LCD display with a resolution of 240 x 320
• 850MHz Application Processor
• 2 Mega pixel camera
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, USB 2.0, Bluetooth technology v 3.0
• 4GB Memory, external microSD slot (up to 32GB)
• HSDPA 7.2/ HSUPA 5.76 Mbps 900/2100
• EDGE/GPRS 850/ 900/1800/1900
• 1,200 mAh battery