Samsung launches candybar style Galaxy Pro smartphone

Samsung has unveiled an Android smartphone designed for business users, as the firm looks to follow in the footsteps of Motorola and challenge the dominance of BlackBerry devices within the enterprise.

The Galaxy Pro handset will ship with a 2.8in touch-screen display, physical Qwerty keyboard, 800MHz processor and the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system.

Samsung is touting the device as a "business partner and social secretary". Key business features include support for Microsoft Exchange Sync and a pre-loaded copy of the Think Free Office Document Editor, allowing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to be viewed and edited remotely.

The Social Hub Premium feature will also allow users to access emails, messages and social networking updates from a unified inbox.

Other key features include a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera, support for Adobe Flash 10.1, Wi-Fi hot-spotting and micro-SD cards up to 32GB.

Samsung noted that the device will also have up to 11 hours of talktime and 620 hours of standby time.

The Pro is set for a second-quarter launch in the UK and will be available on Three, although pricing has yet to be confirmed.

The smartphone is likely to go head-to-head with the enterprise-oriented Motorola Pro, which is also an Android 2.2 device.

However, Motorola appears to have made its device a little more enterprise friendly by incorporating VPN, password support, memory card encryption and a remote wiping feature.