05/28/2008, 8:35am, EDT
Wednesday, May 28thSamsung phone claims Safari web browser
Samsung hoped to draw extra attention on Wednesday by unveiling the L870, its latest slider phone. The handset is said to not only use a full HTML web browser but allegedly uses the mobile version of Apple's Safari web browser. The company doesn't mention receiving permission from Apple for the product and also fails to explain how the software would be used on the device: aside from the need to port from OS X iPhone to the Symbian Series 60 OS used by the phone as well as changing controls to use a conventional directional pad as the interface instead of the iPhone's multi-touch display.
Electronista has contacted Apple to verify the accuracy of the claim but is still awaiting an official response.
Regardless of claimed browser support, the L870 takes advantage of Symbian to provide "push" mail through several clients as well as a themed interface and third-party apps, including a viewer for Office-formatted files.
The phone also sports a dedicated media player for music and video stored off of a microSD slot, an FM radio tuner, and a three-megapixel camera; cellular access is currently targeted at areas outside North America with 900/1,800/1,900MHz GSM calling and HSDPA-based 3G data through the 2,100MHz band. Samsung plans to ship the phone to Europe in August but does claim the phone will be available in "all regions" where GSM service exists.
Note: despite claims to the contrary, the official specifications list refers to Safari by name and not simply a browser based on WebKit, the rendering engine which is officially available to Nokia and other companies using the Symbian platform.
Filed under: iPhone, gadgets
Other story tags: Samsung, Safari, Symbian
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It's War
Ha, let the battles continue. First all of those imitator's that copied our phone that could not even compare even after our phone had been out for months and now they are taking our browser. Haha! It is funny how a little bit of apple is being sprinkled over everything now-days. Oh, and where is the icon?
It's not "war"...
...just an incorrect article.
I can't believe how bad this site is at interpreting information sometimes. The phone obviously doesn't use Safari; it uses WebKit, which already runs and is maintained on Sybmian: http://webkit.org/
And WebKit is the same core that Safari uses. Other than Samsung wrongly referring to it as Safari, it DOES use the same core rendering engine as Mobile Safari, so no news here...
I can't believe that the article doesn't even realize this, and just wrings its hands over how this could possibly be using "Mobile Safari" when it is obviously WebKit that's at play here...sheesh.
There is no war
This article is ridiculous! They didn't "port" Mac OS X to Symbian. Apple open-sourced Safari-mobile (aka webkit), so technically anyone can use it. And they don't need to get Apple's permission to do so.
Google uses Safari mobile for their upcoming mobile OS, and Nokia uses it also. So the real question is-- why wouldn't Samsung use it?
Is it just me...
Or is that phone exceedingly ugly? I'm no connoisseur of phone design, but this one just strikes me as really poorly put together. Too many different brushed aluminum patterns, the odd mix of stylized b/w and full color icons in the interface, the flat button "RAZR"-style keypad... just ick,
Is it just me...
Or is that phone exceedingly ugly? I'm no connoisseur of phone design, but this one just strikes me as really poorly put together. Too many different brushed aluminum patterns, the odd mix of stylized b/w and full color icons in the interface, the flat button "RAZR"-style keypad... just ick,
Until you mentioned....
I was thinking 'what the hell!?' until I saw Symbian mentioned and then it all fell into place.
It's a good thing you have an intelligent readership who know about webkit.
Branding
This is clearly a WebKit browser. The open question is whether Apple has included any additional Safari code, and maybe more importantly-- are they allowing Sammy to use the Safari brand for it?
Obviously incorrect
Who is writing this garbage.
It is obvious that some drone at samsung thinks "mobile browser" means "safari" or some such. This is the antithesis of news.
good luck
"Electronista has contacted Apple to verify the accuracy of the claim but is still awaiting an official response."
I wonder if the response will include the letters "LOL" or "ROFL".
Maybe next time you'll engage a little brain before writing such obviously ignorant articles like this?
Huh?
How is this ignorant? I don't think there was any indication of any difference in opinion as to the likely reason for the statement, but it's still true that Samsung is advertising Safari and not WebKit, which could be a problem for them if Apple didn't license them the name (which I seriously doubt they did).