There's a story buzzing around the InterWebs this morning about Samsung having gone and announced that they'll launch an Android phone on both T-Mobile and Sprint in the US in the second quarter of next year. While I'd be willing to bet a few bucks of my own money that this will pan out, so far as I can tell Samsung didn't officially announce anything. Damn Internet and damn what passes for journalism these days.
Etnews.co.kr ran the story today, and its English language version reads like this:
An official of Samsung Electronics said, ?We are accelerating the development process for Google phone in order to meet the specific need of local carriers.
We will be able to release Google phone in the second quarter of the next year in the US market.?
I contacted Samsung myself and got this statement and ... get this! ... the name of an actual human being to attribute the quote to. Imagine that! Kim Titus, Director of Public Relations for Samsung Telecommunications America just told me,
"Samsung is a member of Google's OHA and we are working on Android. STA does not comment on specific prospective devices until officially announced jointly with carriers."
Yeah, yeah, the anonymous quote is a lot more fun than my official no comment, but let's at least be accurate here, okay? Samsung DID NOT announce any new phones. An anonymous source attributed to Samsung was supposedly quoted, while the company officially denies the story. That's very different, if you're being straight-up about it.
That said, the Etnews article "predicts" that Samsung will "select a full touch screen phone for a form factor of its Google phone, the one that it adapted to Omnia and Instinct." The article goes on to claim, "The Google phone will feature the Google Map based location information service, messenger G-Talk, the G-mail application and Google Search."
