Aggressively pursuing the mobile phone market, Samsung has used the CeBit exhibition in Hanover, Germany, to continue a raft of 2.5G and 3G announcements for the year.

This time it’s an airing for the world’s first 8GB hard disk embedded smartphone which made news last month and the world’s first 10 megapixel camera phone as well as the world’s slimmest slider phone.

Samsung kicked of the year at CES in Las Vegas with the world’s first 3.6Mbps HSDPA technology demo and then backed that up with an HSDPA phone for the European market at the 3GSM show in Barcelona. This is a company with significant R&D capability which is clearly planning to become a world leader in the mobile handset space. Watch out Nokia, watch out Motorola!

Samsung claims the lead in the introduction of hard disk technology in mobile phones and has already launched three models: a 1.5GB model and two 3GB phones. One of these, the SGH-i300, targets the MP3 phone market with capacities that rival many dedicated compressed music players.

Similarly, the 8GB i310 smartphone combines phone, 2mp camera and MP3 player capable of storing up to 2,000 songs (4MB/song). A Windows Mobile 5.0 based device, the i310 can sync playlists, songs, and videos from a personal computer via USB 2.0 Plug & Play just like a removable hard disk. A microSD slot enhances storage capacity, while a document viewer and TV output comes as standard issue. The phone is not scheduled to reach Europe until the second half of this year and no release dates is set for local launch.

Samsung has been cramming higher and higher level cameras into its phones for years now; introducing world’s first 5 mp camera phone in October 2004; the world’s first 7 mp camera phone in July 2005; and then the world’s first 8 mp camera phone just back in November. Now the B600, scheduled for release in Korea next quarter will reach 10 mp plus add mobile TV technology.

The camera has a 3x optical zoom and 5x digital zoom and for the first time in a mobile phone – the B600 will sport an LED autofocus feature. Located next to the lens, the LED autofocus automatically determines the distance and sets an appropriate focus setting.

Finally, for a slim fitting phone, the SGH-Z400 is a 3G phone capable of video telephony, streaming and 2 mp photography. It also supports document viewer, Bluetooth and TV-output function and has a built-in document viewer.

The most notable thing about the phone is its size – 18.4mm thick.

Not slim enough for you? Try the SGH-D870 at 13mm. This 2.5G slide-up handset is the company’s thinnest ever. Sporting a 3.13 mp camera, the SGH-D870 also has all of the business features such as an external microSD memory slot, document viewer, TV-output function, as well as Bluetooth stereo headset (A2DP) support. Though with only 80MB embedded storage space, the external memory (microSD) slot is going to come in handy.