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The battle of the smartphones is once again heating up, with Samsung Mobile announcing sales of its Google Android-powered Galaxy S smartphone have reached 1 million in the US after only 45 days of release. The phone went on sale Aug. 15 and features a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor along with 8-16 GB internal memory, a 4 inch 480×800 pixel Super AMOLED (Pentile) widescreen, capacitive touch-screen display, a 5 megapixel camera in addition to a VGA front-facing camera and a PowerVR graphics processor
The phone also features a 4-inch display powered by Samsung’s Super AMOLED touch-screen technology, a six-axis motion sensor using an accelerometer and geo-magnetic sensors, and employs touch-screen gesture capabilities including multitouch pinch, long tap and zoom and vertical and horizontal swiping. In July the company announced it sold 1 million Galaxy smartphones worldwide, before the phone had launched in the United States.
Samsung also aimed for the social networking crowd with Social Hub, an application built around Messaging and Contacts, both of which initiate the sending and receiving of information, whether it is e-mail, instant messaging, social network updates or SMS messages. Additionally, calendar information from portal calendars, such as Google Calendar, and social networking services are displayed together in one calendar with two-way synchronization.
The Galaxy S is currently available with carriers AT&T and T-Mobile, and is slated to come to Sprint by then end of the month. The company said mobile carriers Verizon Wireless, U.S. Cellular and Cellular South should also be carrying the smartphone later in the fall. The Galaxy S is marketed through AT&T as the Captivate, through T-Mobile USA as the Vibrant and through Sprint as the Epic 4G. When the device comes to Verizon Wireless customers in September, it will be marketed as the Fascinate.
The Internet is also abuzz with rumors surrounding the company’s Galaxy Tab iPad rival, which is expected to fill the gap in size between Apple’s touch-screen tablet and the iPhone. The Tab is expected to run on Android and boasts features such as 3G connectivity, WiFi, a 16:10 screen ratio, a front-facing camera for video calling, SDHC memory expandability and a DMB tuner for TV viewing. Last week, the company offered a brief glimpse of the device via a 20-second promo clip on a corporate Website.
Samsung claimed second place in the category of worldwide smartphone sales for the second quarter of 2010, according to a report from Strategy Analytics. The company shipped 63.8 million handsets during the quarter. While that figure was down from the 64.3 million it shipped during the quarter before, it was still enough to help it achieve 22 percent year-over-year growth.
While Apple’s iPhone remains the popular favorite to beat in the increasingly crowded smartphone market, an IDC report released earlier this month suggested Google’s open-source Android operating system is putting pressure not just on Apple, but rival smartphone operating systems from companies like Nokia and BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion).
The overall smartphone market grew 50 percent year over year, IDC reported, following shipments of 63 million smartphone units during the quarter. During the first half of 2010, this put unit totals at 118.3 million-up 54 percent from the 76.8 million that shipped during the first half of 2009. According to the IT research firm, Samsung shipped a record number of smartphones during the quarter and posted its highest smartphone growth rate since the third quarter of 2008.