Samsung I8520 Beam Gets Official at MWC 2010

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Like every year Samsung has brought some very interesting handsets at MWC. One of them is without a doubt the Samsung S8500 Wave, the first bada-powered smartphone in the world, but it’s surely not the only one. The Samsung I8520 Beam was also officially announced and besides its Android 2.1 features it will sport a built-in projector. Would you be interested in anything like that?

The Beam is not the first handset to sport a pico projector but unlike its predecessor, the LG eXpo, whose projector was an extra addition, it has this extra device built into it. That means you’ll get the pico projector right out the store without having to buy anything else.

So let’s take a quick look at the specs and features of the I8520 Beam, shall we? The Beam will offer you tri-band HSDPA/HSUPA connectivity, quad-band EDGE/GPRS, a 3.7-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, 8-megapixel camera with auto focus and flash, front-facing VGA camera, 720p video playing support, A-GPS, Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0 connectivity, DLNA, Specialized Projector UI, hybrid Widgets, at least 2GB of internal memory and up to 32GB microSD storage space.

The device will have a powerful 1,800mAh battery which should take care of all your projecting needs and it will run Android 2.1 in the background. At this time there are no details regarding pricing and availability dates. What we do know is that the Beam will be available in selected markets in Europe and Asia starting with the third quarter of 2010. Until then we have plenty of time to see whether other manufacturers are going to include pico projectors in their future handsets or not.

On the other hand I don’t know if we actually need mobile phones to perform as portable projectors. Can you actually imagine an emergency situation in which a phone that also doubles as a projector would save a life? And I am not asking if it would save a career…