Samsung AT&T Eternity

As the era of touchscreen dominance continues on as strong as ever, Samsung is now working hard to become the newest major player to the likes of Apple and Blackberry. The Instinct, Samsung’s first major venture into the world of touchscreen phones, released in the U.S. in June with much fanfare. We knew it would only be a matter of time before Samsung made touchscreen phones for everyone else.

And they did not disappoint. Quite the opposite, in fact — Samsung launched a whole campaign as a result of the Instinct’s success, taking a form factor based on the Omnia model sold in Europe using their Touchwiz UI.

As part of this Touchwiz campaign, AT&T released the Samsung Eternity last week, and I had the opportunity to spend some time with it. I was quite excited to play with it as I had heard it would have this innovative new UI never before seen in the States.

Samsung AT&T Eternity Features

While Samsung’s AT&T Eternity is not a smartphone, it is still packed with plenty of goodies.

The camera is 3 MP with video capture and video share capability. Additionally the camera offers panoramic pictures, autofocus, red-eye reduction and a “smile detection” feature which will automatically take the picture as soon as a smile is present.

Interested in playing music? The Eternity includes 3 GB internal memory along with microSD support to expand that number. It doesn’t seem like much compared to the 8 GB the Omnia packs, but it is a welcome sight considering most AT&T phones don’t offer more than 1 GB internally. The music player accepts MP3 formats, and can be synced through Windows Media on your computer.

The AT&T Eternity is quad-band GSM/EDGE and dual-band 3G (850/1900; no 2100). It also sports aGPS with Navigation services available, M3 hearing aid compatibility, stereo bluetooth, video share, mobile email, and accelerometer.

Internet surfing is made easy on the Eternity with the Openwave browser offering full HTML viewing. I do wish it would be easier to zoom in and out on specific areas of each page, but still impressive for one of AT&T’s dumbphones nonetheless.