In terms of camera-phones, Samsung have steadily positioned themselves as one of the big-boys in the industry, especially in this particular subdivision of the market. The D900 and the more recent G600 & G800 have been the latest focus in establishing Samsung this way in the .
The F490, an update to the recent F700 has caused more than a few raised eyebrows, not least because it appeared so quickly since the release of its predecessor. It's more than likely to win plenty of admirers, especially those who were observing the F700 closely prior to its release, as it looks to include some of the features the F700 was meant to have.
On the surface the is simply a tweaked version of the F700 but this would be doing it a disservice. Yes it does still have the same 3.2" display and HSDPA capabilities, but the improvements made do seem to be targeting the inadequacies of Apples i-Phone with crosshairs.
The most immediate change is the removal of the slide-out QWERTY keypad, making the F490 a full touchscreen device. There are still a couple of touch-sensitive soft keys located underneath the display for calls, but aside from that the front is as bare as the F700.
The size of the F490 has been tweaked when compared with the F700 as it has been made slightly taller but the width has been reduced along with the thickness which has been condensed to 11.8MM.
During the F700's development it seemed up until the last minute that the camera module would be 5MP, but was strangely downgraded late on in development. The camera on the F490 will be 5MP but strangely will not have autofocus, which makes it the first of the 5 Mega Pixel camera phones to be without this feature.
A welcome (though not urgent) improvement is to the internal memory capacity, which has gone up from 100MB in the F700 to 130MB in the F490. Micro SD support will also be present allowing up to 2GB cards to be used, although we hope this will be upgraded to support SDHC cards up to 8GB by launch.
The F490 is shaping up to be an interesting addition to Samsung's cameraphone line-up, but the fact that only a few (admittedly significant) improvements have been made to the may mean it has trouble in standing out from its predecessor, though judgement will be reserved until a full hands-on test can be carried out when the estimated February release date comes around.
