Despite much delay, it seems it is better late than never for Samsung Electronics. Last month the firm unveiled its first commercial handset model based on the Symbian operating system, the SGH-D720. Symbian is an open-standard operating platform for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones. Total shipments of Symbian handsets to more than 200 cellular network operators around the world grew 116 per cent last year to 14.38 million units, from 6.67 million in 2003. Almost 25 million Symbian phones have been sold worldwide to date. Samsung's 110-gram, tri-band phone works on GPRS networks. It features a 'snap slide' function for opening and using the keypad. It also comes with a one-megapixel camera with flash, 4x digital zoom, MP3 player, dual speaker, voice recognition, the latest wireless web browser, 64 polyphonic and MP3 ring tones, and a range of productivity applications such as instant messaging and e-mail. No Hong Kong release date has been set.