Samsung’s New Phone Is Called :)

Between your average utilitarian cellphone and the smartphone, there's a niche market that caters to a younger, social networking crowd.

That niche is blowing up right now, spearheaded by the likes of Microsoft's Kin. T-Mobile and Samsung are dropping three more of these phones on consumers: Gravity 3, Gravity T and one simply called the :).

In appearance, the phones look a bit like

the Droid 2

as they all have full, slide-out QWERTY keyboards and touchscreens. What sets them apart, however, is that they are significantly less powerful, cramming in only a two megapixel camera (the :) only has a 1.3 megapixel shooter), and less processing power and memory. The draw is that they run T-Mobile Social Buzz, which is a front-end for the phones that greatly enhance the visibility of social networking and the like.

Really, though, Samsung? A phone just called the :)? As if tech was easy enough to write about with your iWhozzawhatsits and X9000 PrinterBlaster 478-Bs. Now we've got damn symbols to put up with.

That's definitely something to be :( about.