Samsung’s ‘Godiva’ jettisons its physical keyboard

Photos leaked earlier this month showed Samsung’s latestsmartphone, currently going by the name ‘Godiva’. The handset (destined for Verizon in the USA) comes with Android 4.1.2 on a 1.4GHz MSM8960, making nice pictures on an uprated 720p display – but no physical keyboard.

Earlier speculations that the phone could carry a sliding keyboard (fuelled by the similarities between the Godiva’s SCH-i425 designation and that of the earlier keyboard-enabled SCH-i415 Stratosphere II) have been shown to be wildly optimistic, as the photos show a firmly touchscreen mobile handset.

Still, it would appear that the Godiva will be a pleasant JellyBean phone. Minor disappointment from some corners of the Android world regarding the lack of a physical keyboard phone might just be enough to spur Samsung into making a QWERTY Android handset.