New Candybar Handset From Samsung
Samsung has unveiled its latest basic candybar phone that will be available very soon as an unlocked phone from Expansys. You can pre-order the handset for £249.99. The Samsung C6625 features a 2.6 inch non-touchscreen display with 320 x 240 pixels resolution, Tri-band GSM connectivity (900/1800/1900 MHz connectivity), HSDPA 2100 MHz connectivity, a-GPS, Stereo FM radio with RDS, Stereo Bluetooth connectivity, a 2MP shooter with video recording, 100MB internal memory and a microSDHC memory card slot. Its battery provides enough juice for up to 420 minutes of talk time and up to 300 hours of standby time.
Samsung 6.5mm-thin HDTV
Samsung will unveil a 6.5mm thin LED backlit TV panel at the CES 2009 this week. The new ultra-thin Samsung LED TV panel supports a 240Hz refresh rate and Wide Color ControlPro promising a wider spectrum of colors. No word on pricing or availability so far.
Source:i4u
Samsung working up full-frame CMOS sensor for pro DSLR?
Go on and grab your salt shaker, as this rumor just isn’t fit to digest without a few dashes. According to information gathered by Amateur Photographer during an “informal discussion with [Kyong-Kook Shin] at an industry event in Seoul, Korea,” Samsung could be developing a full-frame CMOS imaging sensor. As the story goes, said sensor would eventually be housed in an undisclosed “professional DSLR,” but as of now, the device has only reached the design stage. When Sammy’s UK branch was contacted about the whispers, it refused to confirm, but commercial director Robert King did note that the company was “committed to the DSLR market” and would “continue to invest in R&D in this important market sector.” Yeah, it’s all shaky at best, but we can’t pretend we aren’t a wee bit giddy just thinking about it.
Samsung’s Lee Kun-hee carefully considering his options: prompt or prolonged resignation
Not a lot of people in the US know the name Lee Kun-hee, but he’s the chairman and son of the founder of the world’s largest gadget company: Samsung. And he’s also at the epicenter of one of the craziest corruption scandals the industry has seen in years. Kun-hee and his cronies have already been subject to government probes, and the disgraced chairman has already basically admitted his guilt and responsibility for Samsung’s bribery wrongdoings, but now he’s made the next ever so gingerly step towards the exit by stating, “I will deeply think about reshuffling the corporate management structure and the management lineup, including myself.” Sure, think it over, take all the time you need — just don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, man.
Samsung set to release Aura R410 14-inch laptop
Samsung hasn’t exactly been flooding the market with its Aura laptops since it kicked off the line last year, but the few models it has released so far have certainly been decent enough, and its just-announced R410 model looks to be no exception. This one squeezes right into the middle of the pack with a 14.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 display, which gets backed up by “Intel’s latest 45nm Penryn CPUs,” ATI Radeon Xpress 1250M graphics, a DVD burner, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, and a welcome ExpressCard slot. All of that comes in an expectedly glossy package that weighs in at just over five pounds, and boasts a starting price of £499 (or about $1,000). Look for it to hit Europe in May, with no word of a release ’round these parts just yet.
Samsung and Armani HDTV hits the stage in Milan
That Samsung / Armani tie-up continues to grow closer, following the cellphones is a new premium HDTV unveiled on the opening day of the Milan International Furniture Fair. The 46- and 52-inch 1080p LCDs include Samsung’s 100Hz display technology, wrapped in a design inspired by Giorgio Armani’s ‘08/’09 Armani/Casa home furnishings collection — inspired by Eileen Gray and reminiscent of Hollywood’s Golden Age — built to incorporate the TV as a design element of the room rather than hide it. Expect the 42-inch model, with stylish backlit remote control (a smaller, pebble shaped remote is also included for your less stylish friends) and specially designed front-mounted power switch to launch in Europe, Korea and Russia mid-summer, followed by the 52-inch in late summer.
Hands-on Samsung’s 10 megapixel / 720p NV24HD shooter
Samsung and pretty much everyone else is taking a long hard look at their clumsy UIs as consumer electronics continue to commodify. We’ve certainly seen that demonstrated with striking effect with the Samsung F480’s unfortunately named TouchWiz interface. Now take a look at the UI for Samsung’s NV24HD. Besides shooting 720p video, this 10.2 megapixel shooter with 24-mm ultra-wide angle lens features a series of touch-sensitive buttons surrounding a brilliant 2.5-inch AMOLED display. An interesting twist on the lifeless touch-screens we’ve seen on other cameras. However, it does so at the expense of screen size on a crowded back panel. Still, we’re a bit smitten by the user experience which we quickly got the hang of.
Samsung aiming for water-powered cellphones by 2010
We’ve seen quite a few prototype fuel-cell powered mobile devices, but Samsung’s upping the ante by predicting that we’ll all be running our phones on water by 2010. The company says it’s developed a method to generate hydrogen by exposing water to metal, but the details are a little shaky — we’re guessing it’s similar to the system used in the HydroPak generator, but it’s hard to tell. Still, we’ve got no reason to doubt Samsung’s engineers, who say the system currently provides about 10 hours of use, or about five days of average cell usage, and will eventually allow users to simply top off and go. That’s every traveler’s dream — let’s get this to market, Sammy.
Samsung skips the touchscreen, patents gesture-based phone interface
Samsung’s been getting pretty creative with cell cameras lately — the Instinct lets you pan around web pages by tracking movement with the camera, for example — but the company’s latest patent application, for a gesture-based phone interface, might be a little less practical. The idea is to use the phone’s camera to track your hand movements, which, from the drawings, should have you looking insane on the subway in no time. Of course, we’ve all been guilty of waving at and even talking to our devices when they’re acting up, so maybe a little feedback wouldn’t be a bad thing — there’s one gesture we’d definitely like to see programmed in there.
Samsung expects affordable medium to large OLED displays in 2009 / 2010
Remember Samsung’s 14- and 31-inch OLED panels on display at CES? With any luck, we’ll see them hitting assembly lines sometime in the next two years. Woo-Jong Lee, VP Marketing at Samsung SDI says that medium and large size displays like monitors, laptops, and TVs will get the OLED treatment in 2009 and 2010. Nothing we haven’t heard before. Still, given the group’s recent distractions it’s good to hear it again. Samsung is expected to achieve a production capacity of 3 million OLED panels in 2009 (double the current capacity) before hitting 6 million or so in 2010. That type of output should allow Samsung to start pushing down costs in ‘09 thanks to economies of scale — good news for consumers. They’d better hurry though; we’re this close to dropping $2,500 for Sony’s 11-inch XEL-1. Silly, we know, but you’d understand if you’ve ever seen the display.