South Korea's two biggest cell phone makers previewed on Tuesday handsets they plan to unveil at next week's Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona.

Both phones feature full-screen touch panels on their face, Wi-Fi and close links with social networking services.

The Samsung Monte is an extension of the company's S-series of phones and includes applications for Facebook and MySpace, and widgets for access to Twitter, Bebo and several instant messaging networks.

The front of the phone is dominated by a 3-inch display with full-screen touchpanel through which all the main user interaction takes place.

A GPS receiver hooks into Google Latitude, which allows you to share your position with friends on a map, and provides location data that is embedded with photos taken with the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera. Two applications, Exchange ActiveSync and Google Sync, are included to synchronize e-mail, contacts and other data with a PC.

LG's new handset, the GD880 Mini, connects to Facebook and Twitter and a social network feed function combines updates from different services in a single stream.

In some areas the LG Mini outpaces the Samsung Monte: the screen is slightly bigger at 3.2 inches and the camera offers a higher resolution of 5 megapixels. Other features include high-speed HSDPA networking and A-GPS (assisted GPS).

LG said the Mini will be launched in Europe in March and later in other markets. Samsung didn't provide launch details for the Monte. Both companies are yet to announce prices for the new handsets.

Source: LG, Samsung Go ...