Samsung i7500

Well the news is just in, things have just got official from O2 Germany. Bild.de, a German language technology site, reported earlier that the Samsung i7500 will beat the S8000 to the finish line to be Samsung’s first mobile running Google’s Android operating system. This morning, O2 Germany clearly up the rumours by officially announcing the device. There is no word regarding which carriers will offer the i7500 in other countries or what the availability will be outside of Germany.

In an official press release announcement, O2 has confirmed that the i7500 will be available in June this year:

“Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward to introduce the most innovative Android mobile phone,” said JK Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Mobile Communication Division in Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung’s accumulated technology leadership in mobile phone industry and our consistent strategy to support every existing operating system, I believe that Samsung provides the better choices and benefits to our consumers” he added.

So what can we expect in the way of specifications? Well, Bild.de got it spot on. The i7500 will come with Android 1.5, affectionately known as Cupcake. You will be able to view your shiny new version of Android through a 3.2 inch OLED Display capacitive touchscreen display with HVGA (480 x 320) resolution. Now we’re really listening. Connectivity includes Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity, Dual band UMTS/HSPA connectivity and, of course, WiFi and Bluetooth. Surprisingly, the good parts are still to come. To fill up your 8GB of internal storage there is a 5MP camera with LED Flash, but the best part has to be the 3.5mm headphone jack. This offers some serious music potential so it is also a good job they threw in a microSD card slot for when that internal storage runs dry. All this will be churning away on a Qualcomm MSM7200A CPU at 528 MHz which should be adequate for most tasks.

As far as we are concerned, a phone like this with Android is the real sweet spot in current mobile-phone technology. Sure, it’s not going to suit everyone because it does not offer a physical keyboard, but we want one, now. June can’t come soon enough.

Update: Samsung put out its official press release this morning. -editor