Gigabyte's mobile phone division, GSmart, has announced a new handset which really breaks the mould with regards to what the company has managed to produce in the past, both in terms of design and features.

The new S1200 handset not only looks vastly better than past efforts, gone is all the tacky plastic in favour for shiny black and chrome. Although a lot of the GSmart handsets had 480x640 VGA resolution displays ahead of many of its competitors, the devices just weren't competitive enough in terms of design, but the S1200 should have a problem here. Even less so, considering that GSmart has gone for a 3.1-inch 480x800 WVGA display.

Other features include a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 256MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 3Megapixel camera with auto focus, a mini USB 2.0 port and a microSD card slot. Not too bad overall, although we would've liked to have seen a bit more RAM and ROM, especially as the S1200 is meant to be upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5.

The S1200 offers both HSDPA and HSUPA, although no speeds or information with regards to which bands the handset operates at has been revealed. GSmart has also developed a new custom UI for the S1200 which is called SmartZone which seems to be Adobe Flash based.

No pricing was announced, but the S1200 should become available sometime in Q2.

You can find a picture and some more details here