Closely related to the Samsung F300, the Samsung F500 is a dual-face multimedia 3G phone with a “multimedia side” and “phone side”. However, the SGH-F500 is much more than a standard music phone.. this handset is designed to play videos and, optionally, receive digital TV broadcasts (according to Samsung).

The Samsung F500 receives digital TV transmissions using the DVB-H standard, as does the Samsung P910 and overdue Nokia N92. We don’t know if there will be a version of the SGH-F500 supporting the rival T-DMB platform, nor do we know if the DVB-H receiver is an add-on or will be included as standard in some F500 variants. (See our writeup on the Nokia N92 for a brief explanation of DVB-H).

Another unusual feature of the SGH-F500 is that it supports the DivX video codec, combined with a built-in audio player. This enables the Samsung F500 to play back MP3, AAC, WMA, DivX, MPEG4,H.264, WMV, WMDRM/MTP, DivX DRM, and OMA DRM media types. Yes, that’s a bit of an alphabet soup.. put it this way, the Samsung F500 is probably the most versatile media player we’ve seen to date.

Perhaps the SGH-F500 can be considered as the follow-on device from the Samsung P900 / P910 models, but it’s a much more elegant design. Samsung have designed the F500 so that it can be placed on a flat surface, rather that the P900/P910 which is a handheld device.

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What makes the Samsung F300 so special is something that we can’t show you.. because Samsung’s press office have only supplied a picture of one side of the SGH-F300. Here’s the clever thing: on one side of the F300 is a “music player” interface with a large screen and multidirectional pad.. on the other side is a conventional numeric keypad plus a much smaller screen. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen this on a mobile phone, and it’s just such a darned shame we can’t show it to you. This arrangement is also found on the Samsung F500.

Internal memory is 100Mb, and this can be expanded using microSD cards to a maximum of 2Gb. The F300’s media player is pretty comprehensive, with support for MP3, AAC and WMA audio formats plus the SGH-F300 supports MPEG4 and H.263 video types. There’s also an FM radio built in.

The numeric keypad side of the Samsung SGH-F300 the “phone side” and the side with the large screen the “multimedia side” just to be clear. The multimedia side features a large 2.1″ 176×220 pixel display in 262,000 colours. Underneath that is a multiway navigation key that illuminates a little like the Samsung E900. Samsung say that the F300’s multimedia control “makes navigation very intuitive”.

Flip the Samsung F300 over to the phone side, and there’s a two megapixel digital camera. Of course, with the numeric keypad on the same side, people who you photograph are going to wonder just what the heck you are doing. But the arrangement is still really, really cool.

Of course, the Samsung SGH-F300 is a Bluetooth handset – in this case the F300 supports stereo Bluetooth 2.0. There’s also a USB 2.0 interface so that you can connect the F300 to a PC.

Underneath it all, the Samsung SGH-F300 is a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 device with GPRS and EDGE data (but no 3G). Physical measurements are 104 x 44 x 9.4mm, although the weight in not known.

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