The Samsung S3650 Corby just got official and it’s dressed to impress with its Fashion Jackets and ready for a night out, partying in social networks. With a price tag of 150 euro and attractive design, Corby aims to be affordable and appealing to the young audience.

The basic specs are reminiscent of the Samsung S5230 Star, but Corby maintains its own identity very well. Starting off with the physical dimension of the S3650, it’s 103 x 56.5 x 12.0 mm big and weighs 93 grams. Packed in that compact shell are a 2.8″ QVGA capacitive touchscreen (yes, capacitive) and a 2-megapixel camera.

Samsung S3650 Corby

MP3 player, microSD card slot for cards up to 8GB and a FM radio with RDS keep the S3650 rocking, and the WMV support is a really nice touch. A USB port and Bluetooth 2.1 will aid in loading up the phone with music from your computer, but unfortunately, the USB port is the proprietary Samsung one.

The Samsung S3650 is a globetrotter with its quad-band GSM and EDGE support, thought it’s not the speediest one – it’s 2G only. The 960-mAh battery should give it good standby and talk time numbers though nothing official was quoted.

On the social side, Samsung Corby offers Facebook, MySpace and Twitter integration and the list goes on. YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket are Corby’s playground as well. You can update your status on the various social networking sites and receive updates from your friends via a simple pop-up notification feature.

Samsung S3650 Corby shows off its festive colors

The Samsung S3650 also incorporates a lot of the know-how that went into the likes of the Samsung Jet, like one finger zoom, smart unlock and as with any recent touch-based phone from Samsung – TouchWiz user interface and a great deal of widgets. It also offers something called Cartoon UI, which is described as “a highly stylised graphical menu and wallpaper that adapts according to handset functionality”.

One of the main things that Samsung hopes will attract people to the Corby (aside from its bargain price point) is the interchangeable back covers. The S3650 is available in bright colors, Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal White, and Festival Orange (with more to come in the future), but can get fancy too. Included in the box will be two additional back covers – the Fashion Jackets.

Corby’s front is black, and it’s the back that receives the vivid color treatment. One of the Fashion Jackets is black, making the entire phone black (and black is elegant, right?), while the other one is more interesting – a unique pattern design color.

Check out our studio photos of Samsung S3650 Corby:

The Samsung S3650 Corby will be available in Europe from mid-September for about 150 euro (215 US dollars). No word on its availability outside Europe just yet.

Source: GSMArena.com

Some of our readers were still skeptical after the first two leaks of the Nokia N97 Mini but that should be enough to convince them that the handset is just round the corner. A live preview of the slightly downgraded version of the Nokia multimedia flagship appeared online, revealing almost everything there’s to reveal about the handset.

Being a sized-down version of the original Nokia N97, the N97 Mini-Me will come with 8GB of internal storage rather than 32 GB. There’s also no D-pad this time and the keypad size is reduced, which according to the author makes it uncomfortable for users with larger hands. While the camera module has remained unchanged, the protective cover is dropped, leaving the N97 Mini lens exposed to fingerprints and scratches.

Nokia N97 Mini

On the positive side the Nokia N97 Mini replaces the plastic battery cover with a much nicer metal one and has more solid build quality. There’s also kinetic scrolling throughout the interface, much like the newly released Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and the latest firmware of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

The good news about the Nokia N97 users is that they will also be receiving kinetic scrolling as an update soon. The new firmware sporting it will be released in mid-September.

The main grudge that the author of the preview has against the Nokia N97 Mini is its pricing, which is said to be only about 100 euro less than that of the regular N97 but frankly we cannot quite agree with that. While we certainly consider the N97 slightly over-priced, we cannot help but feel that such a price difference is pretty reasonable. After all with the original handset nearing 400 euro, we cannot have hoped for its younger brother to sell for less than 300, right?

Nokia N97 mini

Leaving the pricing aside, the preview gives us some more spicy info about the Nokia touchscreen portfolio. Apparently it will be receiving some major update in the coming months with the first new editions right around the corner (presumably the Nokia 5230, announced this morning is one of them).

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Windows Mobile seems to be making the headlines quite often these days. While the upcoming WinMo 6.5 is getting closer than ever to release, a leaked software build of the next version of TouchFLO 3D by HTC has been previewed on video.

Bringing much more pleasant looks and boosting the usability of the underlying OS greatly over the last couple of generation of HTC devices, the TouchFLO 3D is certainly a favorite around the office (strictly WinMo context speaking though). And the next reincarnation looks even more appealing bringing more color and some more nice touches to user-friendliness.

The most notable changes at first sight are the new icons that are used for changing the tabs as well as the new image gallery and music albums browsing. There are also nicely large and thumbable shortcuts added on a number of tabs such as the Internet tab, the People’s tab and most notably the Home tab. Those last shortcuts allow you to bring almost any function of your handset at only a click distance.

The clock on the Home tab has also been modified and is now almost identical to the one found on the HTC Hero. The icons also seem heavily influenced those on the Android-running handset. Changes have also affected the Calendar tab and the Weather tab, which as the reviewer says is better integrated with the interface now.

If there’s anything bothering about the videos it’s certainly the sluggishness of the interface, when demonstrated on the HTC Touch HD and the HTC Touch Diamond2. Yet we are pretty certain that when all the i-dotting and t-crossing is done, it will be a whole lot more smoother on the rumored HTC Leo, which should be the first officially released handset to come with the new TouchFLO 3D UI.

Here’s a brief summary of the most notable changes that the TouchFLO 3D 2.6 brings around:

• New colorful icons
• Local weather information added to the Home tab
• Most links throughout the tabs are bigger and more thumbable
• Image gallery tab now has landscape mode
• Peoples tab is more thumbable with no need for flicking
• Music player tab has landscape album art browsing
• Calendar tab has several new view modes
• Web browser tab displays saved links as thumbable buttons
• Settings tab features even more extended settings and digs even deeper in the underlying WinMo than before

But if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details, we’d bet you’d like to see the demo videos themselves.

Detailed TouchFLO 3D ver. 2.5 preview:

Further changes in TouchFLO 3D ver. 2.6:

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