Samsung and T-mobile, at a joint press conference a night before the formal opening of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, announced T-Mobile's forthcoming 8-meagpixel cameraphone - the Samsung Memoir.

Supermodel Helena Christensen, who also happens to be an avid photographer, marked her presence at the event to endorse the Memoir.

An attractive non-smartphone, the Memoir, would come with a flamboyant TouchWiz interface form Samsung; 3G Web browsing speeds; assisted GPS; an onscreen QWERTY keyboard; and an exceptionally good camera.

The Memoir is T-Mobile's second offering towards the cream of the crop cameraphones, following the 5-megapixel Motorola Zine ZN5. Featuring an 8-megapixel camera, Memoir boasts of Xenon flash; a 16x digital zoom; CMOS auto focus; and geotagging; among a handful of other features.

The photos snapped with the Memoir can be uploaded straight to online sharing sites, like Kodak Gallery, Flickr, Snapfish, and Photobucket.

Samsung's Kim Titus said that the Memoir is one of first phones by Samsung that uses the interface from the company's out-and-out digital cameras. Thrust into the camera mode and turned sideways, the phone appears quite similar to a digital camera.

Priced at $249.99, after a $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract, the Samsung Memoir is coming later this month - its availability beginning February 25 onwards! (Rupinder contributed to this report)