Is this a Bluetooth 3.0 phone or what?
Just short of one year after the Bluetooth 3.0 specification was unveiled, we are just now beginning to see designs that take it into consideration.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) posted a Core spec 3.0 "qualified design listing" yesterday for a new Samsung Mobile phone going by the name GT-S8500, a 3.1" OLED touchscreen device.
Samsung's GT line of products has included a number of its higher-end devices carrying a branded OS, such as the Windows Mobile-powered Omnia and Omnia II, or the Android-powered Galaxy. If Samsung's number-names have any cohesion to them, the GT-S8500 is most closely related to the AMOLED-equipped Samsung Jet, also known as GT-S8000, which was released in non-American markets last June. Like the Jet, Bluetooth SIG says the GT-S8500 is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE device with the TouchWIZ interface and an "anti-reflective, high resolution" display.
Though reports today have said that this will be the "first Bluetooth 3.0 device," and cite the increased speeds of the new wireless technology, this may not be the Bluetooth 3.0 device everyone wants it to be.
A hallmark of Bluetooth 3.0 is a technology called Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP), and it appears in the documentation that Samsung's device does not include any of the necessary AMP protocols, including the Host Controller Interface, Manager Protocol, and 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer. With these protocols in place, Bluetooth 3.0 can establish an on-demand Wi-Fi connection with a compatible peer device to greatly speed up the transfer of files.
Betanews contacted the Bluetooth Special Interest Group in an effort to clarify the potential misunderstanding, and they told us that the device does support Bluetooth core version 3.0, but not the high speed feature (which is actually optional). So it definitely includes the other benefits of Bluetooth 3.0 such as enhanced power control, and Unicast Connectionless Data, just not the high speed transfer which is arguably the most anticipated feature of the updated wireless standard.