Samsung is introducing a new smartphone with a somewhat old name. The Samsung Galaxy S II TV is a phone with a 4 inch display and an extendable antenna that you can use to pick up broadcast television signals in Brazil and other parts of South America.
The original Galaxy S II was released in 2011 with specs that were pretty great at the time, but which seem awfully dated today. While the Galaxy S II TV is an entirely new phone, unfortunately it feels similarly outdated specs.
The Samsung Galaxy S II TV sports a 4 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, a 1 GHz dual-core processor, and a 1500mAh battery.
It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s TouchWiz software. The phone has 4GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 5MP rear camera, and a front-facing VGA camera.
The Galaxy S II TV is a GSM phone with support for HSDPA and HSUPA 3G networks and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. It measures 4.8″ x 2.5″ x 0.4″ and weighs 4.2 ounces.
All told, it sounds like a budget phone that just happens to have one premium feature: support for ISDB-T digital broadcast television. Unfortunately you’ll have to watch your live TV on a low-resolution TFT display.
It’s unlikely we’ll see this phone outside of Brazil anytime soon, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar models show up in Japan or other countries where portable digital broadcast tuners are already commonly found in phones and other portable devices.
I’ve seen a number of phones with TV tuners but this is definitely the most “mainstream.” There’s an extremely bizarre Russian N8 clone called FN8 that has a long antenna to pull out for analog reception (I assume?). I wonder if there will ever be a model compatible with the US DTV standards…
TV support is cool but the 800 x 480 display is just awful.
That’s a clever idea. I wonder how long the battery will last when you’re watching TV.