Samsung S8300 "UltraTOUCH" launches early May 2009

In Samsung's press conference in Hong Kong, it is revealed that the latest 8 megapixel camera feature phone S8300 (coded in Hong Kong as "S8300H") will be available early May, with unknown MSRP.

Unlike previous TouchWiz series, S8300 UltraTOUCH comes with a dialpad, which is essential for sending SMS during meetings/lectures.

In addition, for this generation of TouchWiz, new widgets can be downloaded from the Internet, feeding your machine with financial and weather information. Depsite supporting 7.2Mbps HSDPA, S8300 UltraTOUCH lacks wi-fi, meaning that you must pay data connection fees to download widgets if your tariff plan doesn't include.

With Google Map pre-installed in the phone, it can update user's approximate location with info by the operator's station. RingHK reports that the GPS chip cannot be used on Google Map - this may be their problem, and we do not have a hold of the machine so we are not sure about this particular point yet.

The 240 x 400 resolution 2.8 inches AMOLED screen is the same level as M8800, which is about right for a touchphone. As merely using the 880mAh battery will never satisfy a 4.1" screen like Toshiba's TG01.

There is also an accelerometer for S8300, when you tilt the phone, the screen will become landscape mode. Handy for taking pictures.

For camera performance, it successfully inherit the merits of M8800, clear and sharp photos are not difficult to take with its upgraded 8 megapixel camera. You can see the sample from RingHK and from ePrice (warning: links are bandwidth unfriendly).

It has the features of an entertainment camera phone - face detection, smile detection and eye-blink warning are included. The camera is also of impressive speed, comparable to a low-end digital camera. (You will know what we're talking about if you've been using any camera phones, sloooooooow)

We speculate that the price should be around HK$3,880 - HK$4,380 (US$497-US$562). Anything more than this just doesn't worth, unless a 8MP camera is critical to you.

Via ringhk and ePrice (contents in Chinese)