Most mobile phones released this year will have GPS embedded within, but AT&T’s Samsung Propel Pro is the first GPS-enabled handset I’ve seen to also have an embedded joystick.
Headed for AT&T in April, the Samsung Propel Pro combines a non-touchscreen 2.55-inch display with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and an integrated joystick that “maneuvers 360 degrees”. This differentiating “optical mouse” is a feature we’re seeing more often with Windows Mobile phones though this is the first I believe with a joystick.
The 3.9 x 2.5 x 0.6 inch mobile device includes tri-band (800/1900/2100MHz) HSDPA and quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) EDGE data speeds, GPS, the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard operating system, and Xpress Mail software which features email access to Microsoft Exchange Server and Lotus Notes enterprise servers, as well as POP3 access to Hotmail, Yahoo and other online personal email platforms.
Another interesting Propel Pro feature is DioOCR character recognition software which allows users to take a photo of, for example, a business card with the phone’s 3 megapixel autofocus camera and save the information in a text file. Other features include Bluetooth, a 528 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of flash storage, expandable via an included SD card slot.
When it launches with AT&T next month, the Samsung Propel Pro will cost $150 after a $50 mail-in rebate in addition to fees related to a 2-year contract agreement.
