Samsung’s projector smartphone combo is finally hitting European stores after being announced earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but the real question is whether the handset is a little too late.
When Samsung originally introduced a Galaxy Beam phone with a projector back in February 2010 in Singapore, the world was wowed by the combination of technology, but since then a long wait has somewhat hampered our want for the phone, and with this the specifications have been superseded by many of today’s top handsets.
The new Galaxy Beam is an Android-powered smartphone that’s part of the Galaxy range of handsets, whose main selling point is the incorporated HD projector (built into the top of the handset) that allows you to beam images, videos and other media onto a surface up to a size of 50-inches.
The phone shows its age somewhat by running the old version of Android in the form of 2.3 Gingerbread, but has a 1GHz dual-core processor and comes with 8GB internal memory for media storage. Additionally, the handset has all the connectivity bells and whistles you would expect, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSPA+, microSD card support and at the back the phone has a 5-megapixel camera.
The device also supports various video formats for playback including MPEG4, H.264, WMV, Xvid and DivX, plus you can use apps such as YouTube and iPlayer on the handset to stream and project TV onto any surface.
You can pick up the Samsung Galaxy Beam SIM Free for around £400 and on contract from Carphone Warehouse for around £30 per month.
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