Samsung has decided to launch it’s new 5 megapixel full touch screen phone - Samsung F490 in some strange way.

Since there were no news about this handset at CES this week, I thought they were saving the announcement for the big 3GSM show in Barcelona, next month. But I was wrong. Samsung SGH-F490 is being launched today.

Why waste the opportunity to show off the new phone at the one of the biggest trade shows of the year? And then then issue a press release, about the flagship product, that will likely be lost among the flood of news reports coming from CES?

Beats me. But here’s the official Samsung F490 press pics.

And the official Samsung F490 specifications:

• Tri band GSM (900/1800/1900), UMTS 2100, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• 3.2″ 262K Color 16:9 Wide Full Touch Display with Haptics feedback
• Croix interface
• 5 mpx camera, video recording (MPEG4, QVGA at 15 fps)
• Front camera for video calls
• Video playback at 30 fps
• 130 MB of Internal memory
• Built-in mobile Google apps
• microSD card slot
• standard 3.5 mm headphone jack
• Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP+AVRCP), USB 2.0
• Dimensions: 115 x53.5 x11.8 mm
• Weight: 102g

Overall, Samsung F490 looks like a real good phone/media player/Internet browsing device in one slim package. Although only 15 fps video recording is a bit disappointing for a device of this class.

Samsung F490 price is expected to be around 500 EUR and it will star shipping in Europe first
Via Gizmos.es