Samsung Announces First Windows Phone 8 Smartphone, Ativ S
By Sascha Segan August 29, 2012 01:02pm EST
pcmag.com
Windows Phone 8 is here. Samsung today announced the Ativ S, the world's first Windows Phone 8 smartphone, thus beating even Microsoft's key partner Nokia to the punch.
Unveiled tonight at a "Samsung Unpacked" event at the IFA trade show in Berlin, the Ativ S is part of an entire Ativ Windows 8 product line from Samsung, including two convertible Windows 8 tablets and a Windows RT tablet, the Samsung Ativ Tab.
Big and elegant, the Ativ S shows off what Windows Phone 8 can do that Windows Phone 7 couldn't. It has a 4.8-inch, 1280-by-720 Super AMOLED screen, a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor, and a MicroSD card slot. On the back, there's an 8-megapixel camera; on the front, there's a 1.9-megapixel unit. It supports Wi-Fi (including 5Ghz), NFC, and Bluetooth. The Ativ S is a slim slab phone at only .35 inches thick, but packs a big 2300mAh battery to handle the big screen.
The star of the show here is clearly Windows Phone 8, which shares a kernel and Internet Explorer 10 with Microsoft's flagship PC operating system for the first time, as well as the Windows 8 tiled user interface formerly known as Metro. Windows Phone 8 is easy to use, looks bold, offers great Facebook integration, and works on much flashier phones than Windows Phone 7, which Microsoft's hardware spec relegated to mid-range devices.
We're sure to see more Windows Phone 8 devices soon, with HTC and Nokia announcements rumored for Sept. 5.
Samsung is the world's No. 1 mobile phone company by volume of units sold, but it recently suffered a billion-dollar blow when several of its popular Android phones were judged by a California jury to be infringing Apple's patents. By releasing the Ativ right now, Samsung shows that not all of its, ahem, apples are in the Android basket, and that the company can lead on various OS platforms.
The Ativ S announced tonight is a European model. While it will run on AT&T's HSPA network, it doesn't support the preferred networks or bands of any of the U.S. carriers. AT&T and Verizon want LTE, Verizon and Sprint want CDMA, and T-Mobile wants the AWS band. None of those are on this spec sheet. But Samsung is famous for adapting phones to every carrier, so I'm sure some version of the Ativ S is headed to the States.
We'll have more on the Ativ S here on PCMag.com soon.
 |
