What’s the Deal?
The Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica was finally announced on January 6 2010 for its official US debut at the 2010 CES, along with two other smartphones touted as International Phones. Originally released in Europe in November of ’09, the Spica, and covered here on Youserblog.com, it is the first Android based smartphone to support the Divx file extension, will now run it’s course here in the US. It has the same specs as the European version, but now it seems to look outdated, as the resolution isn’t as great as it could be and there are bigger and better Android phones on the market.

Recap: What’s Under the Hood?
Well, it still has a very quick little 800 Mhz processor, absolutely necessary for running the DivX videos. It also comes with a 1500 mAh battery for long life, also needed for powering the DivX videos. The Touchscreen is still the same size as the European version as well. It is a 3.2″ TFT capacitive touchscreen with 320×480 resolution and also has a 3 megapixel camera with auto focus.

The only thing that wasn’t mentioned in the last post about the Spica was the memory. It has an internal memory capacity of 180 MB and a microSD card slot for expandable memory up to 32Gb. Otherwise the Bluetooth is sill 2.1 and it still has GPS and just like all Android based phones, this one being the Cupcake version 1.5, it has a fully functioning HTML capable web browser built in.

And as usual, just as was reported with the European debut, no pricing is available as of yet. I wonder why they keep doing that to us? Anyway, it will support the UMTS 900/2100MHz bands as well as EDGE/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands.

The Other Samsung Phones Announced @ CES
The Corby and the Corby Pro were also announced at the CES on January 6 for their debut in the US. The Corby and the CorbyPro are both very similar, but with the CorbyPro coming with a few more features than the plain Corby, of course.

The Corby, which was built for the younger generations, and was first released back in September and touted as the CorbyTXT by Samsung, has a 2.8″ QVGA Touchscreen with a 2 megapixel camera, dedicated Quick Launch buttons on its face for the camera, the music player and for the messaging application and also has a 3.5 mm jack for listening to music. And, because it is the CorbyTXT, it comes with a full QWERTY on the face of the phone.

The CorbyPro is very much similar to the CorbyTXT but with more features, of course, such as SDPA, Wi-Fi, a 3MP camera with digital zoom, a sliding QWERTY keyboard, where on the CorbyTXT, the keyboard was not a slider. The Pro version also offers inter-changeable back covers, one black and the others with a bold print on them.

It has a built in internal memory of 100 Mb and a microSD slot for an expandable card of up to 32 Gb. It oly has a battery of Li – Ion, 960 mAh, but the talk and standby times are good. Talk time is a little over 8 hours with 500 hours of standby.

And the Verdict Is?
It was just a matter of time before some really great phones made it to the US. And, although I have been saying it for a long time how I wish some gret phones would make their way to the states and now it would appear hat I ahve my wish on the matter. A good phone finally coming to the US is a Godsend.

I like the CorbyTXT, but of course I would, I use TXT messaging services quite a bit that I have unmistakable callouses on my thumbs…