Samsung S7550 Blue Earth picks Sweden for its first sun bathing

Being eco-friendly is increasingly important to companies (or rather to their public image). But whatever the reason, the end result are several eco-friendly phones - the latest of which is Samsung S7550 or otherwise known as Blue Earth.

Samsung S7550 Blue Earth is the most advanced eco-friendly phone by the South Korean giant and besides charging from the sun it's capable enough in GPS navigation, Wi-Fi connectivity and it packs enough TouchWizardry to keep the crowds entertained.

The S7550 Blue Earth will start selling this month with shipments already started towards... Sweden. Yes, Sweden of all places, will be the first country to welcome the Blue Phone by Samsung. Other countries should follow soon.

The timing of this announcement is anything else but accidental - it's been only a couple of days ago that LG reminded us of their new eco-friendly LG GD510 Pop, which boasts environmentally conscious materials and design, as well as an optional solar panel. The Pop is set to launch in Europe mid-October (so it should be days away).

France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal along with other European and Asian countries will be getting the S7550 Blue Earth "soon after" the Sweds. How soon however is not really clear.

Are Samsung finding it hard to close operator deals for the Blue Earth - perhaps operators are not really ready to welcome the eco efforts of the manufacturers and those products are doomed to remain marginal.

This year at the EISA, LG snatched the European Green Award and they did it with the LG KM900 Arena. This could be Samsung's counterblow.

We can already tell the competition next year for that same prize will be much more heated. Samsung are slowly building up quite the arsenal - the old Samsung E200 Eco, the E1107 Crest Solar and of course, the more feature-full S7550 Blue Earth. And others are getting into it too.

We reviewed Samsung S7550 Blue Earth and we didn't mind the recycled plastic and paper. In fact, the plastic the phone was made of was on par with that of most other phones and the recycled-paper box had one of the cleverest designs we've seen - it can turn into several different things, like a photo frame or a pen stand. And the phone was a nice break from the bare-minimum eco phones that came before it.

Now, we're just waiting for the first solar powered smartphone, so all that's left to say is - gentlemen (and phone manufacturers), start your electric vehicle's engines and let's spin off!