Manufacturer Samsung Successor Samsung i5800 | Availability by country November 2009 Form factor Slate | |
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Compatible networks HSDPA (3G) 900/2100, Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, Dimensions 115 mm (4.5 in) H
57 mm (2.2 in) W
13.2 mm (0.52 in) D | ||
The Samsung Galaxy Spica, also known as Samsung Spica, Samsung GT-I5700, Samsung Galaxy Lite and Samsung Galaxy Portal, is a smartphone manufactured by Samsung that uses the open source Android operating system. The phone is referred to as the successor of the Samsung i7500 and sometimes referred as Galaxy Lite. Even though some of its features like the camera resolution, storage and data connection speeds are lower than the i7500 its processor's clock speed is much higher at 800 MHz. It is succeeded by the Samsung Galaxy 3.
Contents
Features
The Galaxy Spica is 3G smartphone, offering quad-band GSM and announced with two-band HSDPA (900/2100) at 3.6Mbit/s. The phone features a 3.2-inch LCD capacitive touch screen, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, and a digital compass. The i5700 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and is equipped with DNSe 2.0.
Software-wise, the Galaxy Spica offers a suite of Mobile Google services, including Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. The phone’s GPS enables Google Maps features such as My Location, Google Latitude, and Street View. It also supports MP3, AAC (including iTunes Plus downloads), WMA audio, and H.264 video. The phone is also capable of playing DivX and Xvid coded content which makes it the first Android phone that supports this feature.
Availability
The phone is available in Europe, Asia and Middle East. The i5700 is Samsung's second Android-based handset for Europe. The phone was released on December 2009 in Turkey and is released in Canada on the Rogers Communications network.
Software
The Samsung Galaxy Spica has received an update to Android 2.1 as of February 2010. Some phone vendors, such as Three and T-Mobile in the UK, have started shipping the phone with 2.1 preloaded. As of May 2010, phones have started to sell in India and Indonesia with the 2.1 update preloaded.
The only official method for updating the Spica is via Samsung's PC Studio software and not, unlike others, via OTA.
It is not possible to update Branded phones in this way. In this case, the phones needs to be updated by an official Samsung Partner.
However, unsupported methods are available using a combination of third party software and a range of available firmware from Android 1.5 to alpha versions of Android 2.2, Android 2.3 and Android 4.0.