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Samsung Telecommunications America today introduced the SPH-i330, the follow-up to the SPH-i300, one of the first Palm OS smartphones to hit the market. The new device is 3G ready and is housed in a more slender and refined form factor than its predecesor.

According to Samsung, the device features a 256-color and 160x240 pixel touch screen panel and is equipped with 16MB of memory and several Palm applications, including Address Book, Date Book, Expense Report, Calculator, Mail, To Do List, Memo Pad, HotSync and Games. The i330's Blazer multimode browser provides viewing HTML websites.

The device, which measures 4.92 (H )x2.36(W) x 71(D)-inches and weighs 5.82 ounces, has hot keys for enabling the user to dial numbers from the phone book without using the stylus and is equipped with voice-activated dialing, voice-memo, speed-dialing and call logs. In addition to a categorized phonebook, permitting several phone entries for one contact, the i330 offers speakerphone capabilities with the option to mute conversations during calls. The devices has a 66MHz Motorola Dragonball processor and includes support for CDMA2000 1xRTT networks for data transfer speeds as high as 144 Kbps, ten times quicker than the earlier model, which only handled standard CDMA data calls with speeds of up to 14.4 Kbps.

It'll take time to see how the SPH-i330 fairs in a handheld segment that has only gotten more crowded since the original Samsung smartphone was released late last year. These devices include several Treo Communicators from Handspring and Kyocera's eagerly anticpated sequal to its version of the Palm OS smartphone, not to mention Palm's upcoming Tungsten W, Nokia's Communicator and the slew of Microsfot-based smartphones that have already hit or are about to hit the market.

Pricing and availability for the SPH-i330 hasn't been released yet.