Reference Auto

The global smartphone market is raging, with the company offering the most in terms of variety emerging the winner, and in the latest move, Samsung Electronics has unveiled three smartphones globally based on the Bada operating system while HTC has come up with a glassless 3D smartphone in India, the price of which is pretty steep.

The models rolled out by Samsung include a new flagship handset the Wave 3, which includes a software client for its new messaging service ChatOn that will roll out from September.

The Wave 3 will come for $450 and could be available from next year. The wait for Indians could be another three months, that is, around March next year.

The phone connects to Internet via Wi-Fi or high-speed packet access or HSPA and can download data at up to 14.4M bps and upload at up to 5.76M bps.

The smartphone runs on Bada 2.0 software, which supports Wi-Fi Direct, a technology and certification mark managed by the Wi-Fi Alliance that paves the way for devices that are compatible to connect directly to each other in order to share content.

Bada is the home-grown operating system of Samsung and has surpassed Microsoft’s Windows Phone, selling two million handsets in the second quarter.

The Wave 3, which has a metal case, comes with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.4 GHz processor and a 5 megapixel camera that has a LED flash. The camera is also capable of shooting video at 720 p.

The eclectic features of the Wave 3 include content sharing and a facility that enables users to send messages to a group of users. The Interaction Rank feature allows users to see how often they communicate with their friends and associates.

Samsung also unveiled the Wave M and Wave Y, which are based on Bada 2.0 and come with Near-Field Communications or NFC as an option.

Taiwanese handset maker HTC Corporation has rolled out a glass-free 3D smartphone in India for a whopping Rs 35,990. The HTC EVO 3D comes with Google Android Gingerbread 2.3 operating system.

The smartphone has Qualcomm’s latest MSM 8660 Snapdragon system on a chip running at 1.2 GHz, with an Adreno 220 graphics engine, a one GB RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage.

HTC India country head Faisal Siddiqui averred, “We will collaborate with Qualcomm to present the EVO 3D, the first smartphone in India with a superior 3D viewing, and that too without glasses. We are confident that the phone will set a benchmark for 3D viewing in India.”

HTC could find quite a few takers owing to its glassless and superior 3D features even though it is priced high but if Samsung delays the commercial launch of its three smartphones, it could dent the company’s prospects as competitors could roll out eclectic hi-tech handsets and intensify the slugfest in the smartphone market.