Samsung teases AT&T customers with supersized Infuse 4G

January 5, 2011 By Nick Mokey

AT&T will land a major heavyweight for its yet-to-appear 4G network with the Samsung Infuse, a massive 4.5-inch Android phone that also records in full 1080p.

With Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all offering 4G in dozens of cities by now, AT&T may be the last to flip the switch, but customers won’t have to wait long for hardware when the towers finally do go live. On Wednesday, Samsung officially unveiled the Infuse, a 4G superphone ultimately destined for AT&T that may have iPhone 4 owners thinking twice about which phone rules the network.

In a word, it’s big. Samsung reached for the same Super AMOLED sceen technology found in the Galaxy S for the Infuse, but stretched it out to a whopping 4.5 inches, dwarfing even previous pocket weights like the 4.3-inch Motorola Droid X. That’s only one dimension, though: Samsung also claims the Infuse is also the thinnest phone in AT&T’s portfolio.

All that real estate left plenty of room to pack in other goodies, and Samsung obliged, most notably with a 8-megapixel rear camera that also shoots full 1080p HD video, a significant technical feat beside the current crop of 720p shooters. It’s made by possible by Samsung’s Hummingbird processor under the hood, clocked not at 1GHz as in the Galaxy S but to an even faster 1.2GHz. A front-facing camera for chat, of course, is included as well.

Interestingly, the Infuse will run Android 2.2 rather than Android 2.3 as we’ve seen on most CES arrivals this year, but we doubt an older OS will hold the hardware back.

Samsung hasn’t talked about pricing or release dates just yet, but AT&T claims is LTE network will be operational by mid-2011, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Infuse on it at launch.

Showing 6 comments

Pradeep Patel at 4:54pm 20th February 2011 Dying to buy one of these phones. Any date and price been announced yet except "sometime in the second quarter'?? I saw the htc intense came put at $99 and then was shocked that att put the price of the mototrola atrixc to $199 . . I would think that they would want to price the phones cheaper and then they could make money via the data plan that the new user would be forced to have.But then what do i know!!
Dario Choi at 5:42pm 13th January 2011 I am tired of carrying 3 devices all the time: phone, tab, and PC. I am excited that, perhaps, with the 4.5" Samsung Infuse, I would not have to carry the tab.
Guest at 1:58am 6th January 2011 I was told by an AT&T senior tech supervisor, who worked for Apple earlier in the year, that iPhone 4 will be capable of the AT&T launch of 4GLTE in June [he projected] of this year. He also made mention of possible iOS or AT&T carrier software being purged to the iPhone's that, if the iPhone 4, would allow iPhone 4 to connect to the 4G network. I'm hoping so!
1. ioman at 9:52am 6th January 2011 If you are right, I could hug you! :) Was wondering what the hell AT&T was going to do about iPhone 4 users. I just recently bought my iPhone and have been scared to find out that it would be outdated once AT&T finally did release their 4G network. Smart of Apple to be thinking ahead on this.
Jonathan O at 12:12am 6th January 2011 "Samsung reached for the same Super AMOLED sceen technology found in the Galaxy S. " Technically it uses what they are calling Super AMOLED 'Plus'... I know, how many superlatives can you throw in there but it's supposed to have something like twice the sub pixel density and greater brightness to improve outdoor visibility over standard Super AMOLED displays.
jessie at 9:18pm 5th January 2011 The infuse 4g is not an LTE phone. They call it 4g because its hspa plus. Similar to T-Mobile's 4g. But looks like an awesome phone.