A day after introducing the SPH-i700, a tri-band CDMA Pocket PC-based smartphone, Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung), has officially introduced the SPH-i500, a Palm OS smartphone with the emphasis on "phone."

The clamshell-designed i500 is a dual-band/tri-mode 3G 1XRTT handset with a 160 x 240 pixel touch screen panel that supports 65,000 colors. The phone runs on Palm OS 4.1 and comes with 16MB of RAM and a 66MHz processor. It measures a compact 3.4 x 2.1 x .85-inches and weighs only 4.5 ounces. It is designed to fit in a users shirt pocket and features a backlight for its keypad. Additional details about pricing and availability haven't been released yet.

The i500 is a very different type of smartphone than the SPH-i330, which emphasizes the PDA aspect of the PDA/phone hybrid and uses the display as a virtual keypad.