MWC 2011: Samsung Hubs content stores debuts on Galaxy S II

Four discrete stores for books, music, games and social all accessible from the home screen.

Another interesting move from Samsung, which is stealthily evolving from a pure device maker to one with its fingers in many services pies.

It's already launched the Samsung App Store and its own bada OS on lower-end smartphones.

Now Samsung Hubs.

It's broken into four parts:

• Social Hub Premium: Contact list, IM status, and updates from social networking sites in one place.
• Readers Hub: 2.2 million books and novels, 2,000 global and local newspapers in 49 languages and 2,300 magazines in 22 languages.
• Game Hub: Free and premum titles from Gameloft, plus social games including ngmoco’s We Rule and We City.
• Music Hub: Over 12 million tracks from 7digital.

ME’s news coverage of MWC is supported by NewBay,

The home for these new services is the Galaxy S II, which Samsung says is the “world’s thinnest smartphone”

It's 8.49mm thick, and looks a lot like iPhone 4, which is 9.3mm.

This follow-up to one of the darlings of the Android world was widely expected.

However, the specs remain very impressive. The Gingerbread (Android 2.3)-powered phone has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen and Dual-Core processor.

Samsung says this dual core capability speeds up web browsing, and brings multi-tasking comparable to a PC-like environment.

There's also an eight megapixel camera and a camcorder with 1080p full HD recording and playback.

Another new innovation on the device is the Live Panel, a kind of content bar that aggregates live web and apps on a single customisable home-screen.

ME’s news coverage of MWC is supported by NewBay, the leader in cloud-based digital content services.

NewBay’s LifeCache white label platform enables operators and device makers to deliver a lifetime of content experiences across mobiles, PCs, tablets and TVs. Customers include T-Mobile, Telefónica O2, France Telecom Orange, AT&T, Telstra, LG and more.