Samsung Jet takes off

Korean vendor Samsung, currently trailing Nokia as the second biggest gadget manufacturer worldwide, is glowing with pride this week as it prepares to launch its Jet touchscreen device.

On Thursday the company said that it has racked up two million pre orders for the gadget, which goes on sale June 29. Compare this to the one million iPhone 3GS units Apple managed to shift in its first weekend of launch.

The Jet is Samsung’s showcase for its 3.1″ WVGA AMOLED display that claims to provide a resolution four times higher than a WQVGA screen. The device runs on a proprietary Samsung OS but features the TouchWiz 2.0 interface that includes all the bells and whistles seen on rival platforms such as widgets. Under the hood it packs an 800MHz application processor, putting it up there with the iPhone 3GS in terms of performance, coupled with a 5 megapixel camera, GPS and HSDPA connectivity.

The Jet is available from Vodafone in the UK for free on a 24 month contract from £20 per month.