Samsung's i8520 Beam packs an in-built projector

Although we fear the only people who will buy a phone with a projector built into it are the same jackasses people who bring laser pointers into movie theaters, we have to admit the Samsung i8520 Beam is pretty darn cool considering the DLP Pico projector is actually built into the device and not some crappy add-on. But of course, no novelty feature can help a phone’s sales if the rest of it isn’t up to snuff, though it looks like the i8520 has enough packed into its 14.9mm thin frame to get the geek juices flowing:  a 3.7″ WVGA Super AMOLED display, 8 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, aGPS, Wi-Fi, DNLA, 7.2Mbps up HSDPA (900/1900/2100MHz), 16GB of internal memory, 512MB ROM / 384MB RAM and an 1800 mAh battery that is said to yield 7 hours and 50 minutes of 3G talk time. OS wise, the i8520 is running Android 2.1 with “Specialized Projector UI”, something which is identical to the bada interface. No word yet on what processor we’re dealing with, although we have fired off an email to Samsung PR. The Samsung i8520 Beam will be available in Europe and Asia starting in Q3.

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