AT&T Offers Samsung Phone With Napster MobileAT&T Offers Samsung Phone With Napster Mobile

AT&T on Monday unveiled the SLM by Samsung, a lightweight clamshell cell phone that's designed for music and multimedia.

The phone is AT&T's first to include Napster Mobile, a new service that allows subscribers to search a catalog of five million songs, preview snippets of songs, and download them wirelessly.

AT&T initially announced its plans to roll out the mobile service with Napster in October. Subscribers interested in using the service have a choice of downloading five tracks a month for $7.49 with the Napster Mobile Five-Track Pack plan or purchasing songs for $2 each without the plan.

The carrier has been ambitiously rolling out various music capabilities on its phones in hopes of attracting a large group of mobile users. Earlier this month, AT&T also made available a popular Internet service called Pandora on select cell phone models. The service allows subscribers to find music and create personalized radio stations on their phones.

In addition to Napster Mobile, the new 3-ounce SLM phone includes other features, such as AT&T Video Share, stereo Bluetooth, a 2.0-megapixel camera with video capture, and expandable memory through a microSD card slot. AT&T claims the phone offers download speeds of 600 Kbps to 1,400 Kbps on its HSDPA third-generation cellular network.

The phone also will be the first to come pre-loaded with a mobile banking application, which AT&T announced last week. The carrier collaborated with financial firms Wachovia and SunTrust Banks, as well as mobile banking and payment provider Firethorn Holdings and its strategic partner CheckFree, which specializes in financial e-commerce services, to enable mobile banking on cell phones. The app is accessible through a mobile banking icon in the phone's applications folder and lets AT&T subscribers view their bank account balances and history, transfer funds, and pay bills.

The SLM costs $150 with a two-year subscription to AT&T and a $50 mail-in rebate. It will be available in stores and online starting this Friday.