Not to be outdone by Sony Ericcson's [NYSE:SNE] new 8-megapixel phone, word has it that Samsung [SEO:005930] is formulating a competitor dubbed the i8510, complete with -- you guessed it -- an 8-megapixel camera. The phone will run on the Symbian S60 operating system (recall that Symbian was recently bought out from partial ownership by European mobile giant Nokia [NYSE:NOK]) and could provide competition for Nokia's own Symbian-based N96.

Spec'd to succeed, the i8510 will reportedly sport a 2.8-inch QVGA screen running at a resolution of 240x320 pixels, and have all the standard radios we've come to expect: UMTS with HSDPA (that's 3G GSM wireless) connectivity, WiFi, GPS, TV out, a dedicated 3D graphics processor and DivX support. It'll also sport an optical nav mouse, and the 8MP camera will have auto-focus, xenon flash and a pretty spiffy 120 frames-per-second video recording mode. Internal memory will top out at 16GB (and could go as low as 8GB on lower-end models) and the form-factor will be sliding, at about 17mm thick.