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Forget swine flu: Samsung i7500 Android phone is official

Samsung has announced its first Android handset, and like swine flu, it's coming to Europe very soon. We've got all the details

Nate Lanxon Special to CNET News
2 min read

Stop worring about catching flu from pigs -- it's got bird flu written all over it, and that didn't even come to the UK. Unlike Samsung's first Android phone, the i7500, which we'll be using to distract you from the media onslaught concerning the pending global apigalypse.

If we're absolutely honest -- and we invariably are -- it looks like any other Samsung handset, but it's got some top-end features inside a 12mm-thick chassis, which we'll outline with a collection of moderately humorous pig-related jokes, none of them a patch on 'apigalypse', admittedly.

Features include GPS navigation with Google Maps (for knowing which way to run away from those flesh-crazed zombie pigs), an autofocusing 5-megapixel camera (for live blogging any infected pigs you find), an 81mm (3.2-inch) AMOLED touchscreen (for proofing your pig photos), 7.2Mbps 3G or Wi-Fi data connections (for uploading them), 8GB of internal memory with microSD expansion (for storing them) and stereo Bluetooth (for listening to War Pigs as you leg it).

And unlike the clunky T-Mobile G1, it's got a real 3.5mm headphone socket. That's an epic win right there. It'll handle MP3, AAC (including iTunes Plus downloads) and WMA audio, and H.264 video, which should look awesome on that AMOLED screen.

Plus there's the Android Market app store for making the most of the phone. And if nothing else, it'll double up as a weapon for crushing the scary-looking skulls of any undead porkers you stumble upon.

Expect a UK launch in June, with carrier and pricing details yet to be announced.