Samsung Electronics has unveiled the SCH-M470, the company's first cell phone to support faster upload speeds using HSUPA (high-speed uplink packet access) technololgy.
The SCH-M470 is a slider-type handset that can send data at up to 2Mbps when on an HSUPA network.
Conventional WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) offers upload and download speeds of around 384k bps but cellular carriers
are now deploying new technology to enable faster data transmission.
The first enhancements to be added target the download rate, which is now 3.6M bps or 7.2M bps on some networks, using a technology called
HSDPA, and now increasing the upload speed with HSUPA.
For consumers this adds up to less time spent waiting for pictures,
video or music attachments on messages to be sent. As an example
Samsung said using HSUPA means it takes just 30 seconds to send an
average MP3 song file.
The Samsung phone features WiFi, Bluetooth and a 2 megapixel camera. It is available in South Korea only and costs about 600,000 won (US$620).