Samsung Galaxy Y, Galaxy Y Pro: Designed with the Generation Y in mind

By Zack Whittaker | August 24, 2011, 11:07am PDT

Summary: Samsung announced two new Generation Y focused smartphones, the touch-screen Galaxy Y and the keyboard-including Galaxy Y Pro, to rival the BlackBerry and iPhone.

Specifically designed and release with the Generation Y in mind — symbolised with the Y lettering in both phones, the Samsung Galaxy Y and Galaxy Y Pro — could these two smartphones be the perfect BlackBerry and iPhone competitor?

The two phones, aimed specifically at the younger Generation Y, will be powered by Android Gingerbread.

The Galaxy Y (right) is touch-only, to rival that of the iPhone, while the BlackBerry competitor is the Galaxy Y Pro (left), which includes a fully-fledged QWERTY-keyboard.

However, the phones are not as powerful as one might had hoped.

Part of Samsung’s simplified phone naming strategy, there will be five distinct classes of phones.

Ranging from “Y” entry level phones — which stands for “Young” — through to “S” for premium models, each class will have additional markers to indicate specific functionality of that device.

Directly competing with the new range of BlackBerry Curve’s — Research in Motion’s entry-level smartphone — the two are similar in power, in that both of them are frankly underpowered.

Both have a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n with faster wireless transfer speeds, but a measly 832Mhz processor.

The Galaxy Y Pro also launches with enterprise features, for graduate students going into the work environment, including Cisco Mobile and WebEx.

Pricing has yet to be announced. Considering the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet, a lack lustre competitor to Apple’s iPad was priced at the same rate; one can only hope that Samsung does not make the same mistake twice.

To compete with the BlackBerry and the iPhone — the two phones announced today need to cost less, and subsidies by the carrier need to cost the targeted Generation Y user less per month, too.

But whether the brand power of the Galaxy is powerful enough to rival that of competing BlackBerry and iPhone brands — well, I think we all know the answer to that.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/samsung-galaxy-y-galaxy-y-pro-designed-with-the-generation-y-in-mind/12484?tag=nl.e589