The mobile arm of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC) wants you to know that the arrival of its new Galaxy S Android phones in the US is a really, really big deal.

The company flew in JK Shin, president of Samsung's mobile communications division, to introduce the lineup, rented a fancy club on Manhattan's West Side to stage the event, and hired hip-hop star BoB to entertain the crowds.

"The race to redefine the smartphone has begun and, with the Galaxy S, Samsung is already standing at the finish line," Shin boasted to the crowd.

See pictures of the event below:



Samsung Telecommunications America chief strategy officer Omar Khan proclaimed the Galaxy S launch as "truly historic" for Samsung in the US. All of the top five carriers in the US will have a Galaxy on their books, and the phones include:

Sprint's Epic 4G is, on the face of it, the most obviously different of the Galaxy S series. The device supports both WiMax and 3G and has a slide-out keyboard. The rest of the Galaxy series are solely touchscreen affairs. (See Samsung Gets Epic With WiMax Smarty for Sprint.)

Samsung's Khan tended to focus on the common elements that the No. 2 smartphone vendor believes puts these phones in a class of their own. Notably the four-inch Super AMOLED display, which Khan says has a contrast ratio of 50,000 to 1. All of the phones also sport a Samsung-developed 1GHz A8 Hummingbird processor and can support Android 2.2, whenever that upgrade is available.

Only T-Mobile has so far revealed a definite launch date and price for its Galaxy S phone. The Vibrant will be available on July 21 for $199. No pricing details have been announced for any of the other phones yet.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile