Samsung i8520 ‘Halo’ with 3.7″ Super AMOLED screen, Android 2.1, a fugly UI, and… A projector?
Earlier today, Samsung held a press conference a day before the official start of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain to show off their latest wave of phones. They did not, however, announce any new phones running Android or Windows Mobile, choosing to instead focus on Bada OS.
Browsing around on Samsung’s Press Kit website, though, reveals a previously unannounced phone named I8520 “Halo”. It boasts Android 2.1 with a custom (and hideous) UI, a 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, 8 megapixel camera with 720p /30fps video support, Bluetooth 2.1, standard 3.5mm headphone jack, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, A-GPS, 16GB of internal storage and microSD expansion, stereo speakers , DLNA support and a questionably useful projector. Seriously, a projector on a phone sounds great on paper, but I’ve played with many prototypes, and I think it’s all just a huge gimmick.
The phone will be announced officially tomorrow.
Update: Upon closer look, it seems that Samsung has ported the Bada OS interface to Android. Which is disappointing since Samsung is no HTC when it comes to building great UI replacements. Yay for rooting!
