Samsung Electronics has developed a cell phone capable of receiving a new real-time traffic information system that is already in use in some countries.

The company’s new SPH-B5800 handset can receive and decode the information broadcast using the Transport Protocol Experts Group (TPEG) format. Development of the TPEG system began in the late 1990s under the umbrella of the European Broadcasting Union, which was seeking a common standard through which to broadcast traffic information.

Samsung SPH-B5800

TPEG traffic data is available in South Korea via the country’s terrestrial digital broadcasting (DMB) service, and it’s that data the Samsung phone receives and decodes. Trials are also taking place in several countries, including one by the BBC in the United Kingdom.

The phone updates travel information every five minutes and can also display the TV stations broadcast through the DMB system.

Other features of the handset, which will be available in South Korea later this month and cost about US$600, include a 2-megapixel camera, 330,000-word dictionary, and 2-inch color thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. The phone is compatible with South Korea’s CDMA2000 1xEvDO wireless networks.

It measures 96 by 46 by 16 millimeters and weighs 96 grams.

Also Thursday, Samsung said it has developed a thinner digital camera module for use in thin cell phones. The complementary metal oxide semiconductor image sensor has a quarter-inch lens of the type typically found in slim cell phones and a resolution of 3 megapixels. At present, such sensors of this size can manage only 2 megapixels, so phone makers are stuck at this resolution or have to use a larger sensor for higher resolution, thus increasing the size of the phone.

Samsung will begin to mass produce the sensor in the first half of 2007.

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)

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