Samsung Wave 578 (with NFC) available soon in UK on Orange

Mobile operator Orange are to start offering the ‘Samsung Wave 578′ to British customers. Why is this significant? It is one of the smartphones which has NFC technology – near field communication. NFC has started to gather pace in recent times, due to the contactless payments that can be done, meaning less reliance (and potentially long-term no need) for cards. In fact the product is being launched in association with Barclaycard What’s more this is a budget phone so you won’t need an iPhone style contract.

Samsung Wave 578 spec details:

• 3.2-inch touchscreen
• Bada operating system (Samsung’s own OS)
• Quick Tap contactless payment technology
• 3G
• Bluetooth
• Built-in GPS
• Video calls
• Java capable
• 3.15 megapixel camera
• FM radio or MP3 player
• Battery life 7hrs talk time, 20 days standby

It is a fairly basic handset, and will have to compete against a lot of other smartphones at the lower end of the market. We will have to see if the near field communication aspect can win it many sales.

Here is a video of the smartphone in action.

The handset will be free for pay-monthly customers. As this time we are not aware of an exact date, as the Orange website simply says ‘coming soon’. Expect it to be only a few weeks now. As for price it should be cheap, but we have no solid figures. If the phone was on Android it would be much better as you would have access to thousands more apps, unfortunately the Samsung app store is only stocked with the company’s favourite apps. But if you aren’t too fussed about that, and more focused on the NFC tech then it’s not an issue.

If you really want one but don’t want a contract, their is a company called Sotel UK selling them already on Amazon.

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