Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 Due mid January

Mythical beast finally to be unleashed?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is as rare as “a good hair day” for Donald Trump. It made a brief appearance at IFA 2011 in September before quickly being pulled due to numerous lawsuits courtesy of Apple.

Well it appears it may now finally land in the UK mid January or to be more precise, Friday the 13th!!!. A bad omen? You can now pre-order the device at Expansys, who will fulfil the order on arrival of the stock, which is expected on Friday 13th January 2012. You’ll also need to pony up £524.99, and that’s just for the basic 16GB Wi-Fi only model. For the 32GB model, it’ll cost you £599.99. There’s no sign of the 64GB version or 3G versions.

It’s not all bad though, check out the features on this bad boy!

Features of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 (16GB)

• 7.7″ WXGA Super AMOLED Plus Display
• Android 3.2 Honeycomb with TouchWiz UX
• 16GB Internal Storage
• 1.4GHz Dual-Core Processor
• MicroSD Expansion up to 32GB
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and HSPA Connectivity
• Up to 10 Hours of Video Playback
• Sleek Design with Metal Finish
• Under 8mm Thick and Weighs 335g

Article: Local via Go Gadget News

Tags: Android, Dual-Core, Expansys, Galaxy Tab 7.7, Honeycomb, MicroSD, Samsung, Super AMOLED Plus, Tablet, UK

Posted in Android, Computing, Gadget News, Samsung, Tablet PC's | No Comments »

Ice Cream Sandwich with TouchWiz 4.0 on Galaxy S II spotted

Although we were already promised that the Samsung Galaxy S II would be receiving the Android Ice Cream Sandwich update at some point, we’re still in the dark as to when. Well, it looks like development on the latest version of Android is going along quite well and below is a video of Ice Cream Sandwich playing nice with TouchWiz 4.0.

It wouldn’t be smart to imagine that the likes of Samsung and others would allow the latest version of Android to shine through as much as we would like but TouchWiz does indeed cover up a lot of what we loved about the Ice Cream Sandwich aesthetic. The video shows off only a couple of new features within TouchWiz that would hint that the handset is running Android Ice Cream Sandwich but what we do see is rather nice.

The changes in TouchWiz, like  Android 4.0, begin at the lock screen. TouchWiz has always allowed the user to swipe anywhere on the screen and drag to unlock and it’s no different this time around. However, it looks like when a finger is placed onto the display on the lockscreen the Ice Cream Sandwich circle lock appears. It’s pretty subtle but we supposed it’s a nice touch.

Other tweaks are minimal, as the home screens look almost exactly like any other TouchWiz build you see today. The new method of multitasking in Ice Cream Sandwich is easily accessible by holding down the home button, just as you would on any other Android device. Face Unlock also made an appearance in the settings, though it wasn’t demoed.

If there weren’t so many sweet tweaks on the back-end of Ice Cream Sandwich, it would be a little disappointing to see TouchWiz covering up so much of the new, futuristic look and feel of the latest version of the OS. Luckily, when Android 4.0 peaks through, it looks great and hopefully there’s more Ice Cream Sandwich to be found.

Given that TouchWiz looks to cover up so much of Ice Cream Sandwich, it makes me wonder if you’ll even know you’re on Android 4.0 when HTC releases it with Sense.

Article: RSS via IntoMobile

Tags: Android, Galaxy S II, Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung, Smartphones, TouchWiz UI, Video

Posted in Android, Samsung, Smartphones, Videos | No Comments »

Samsung Wave 3 launches around the world

If you like Samsung smartphones with alternative operating systems you might want to listen up with the Wave 3 smartphone launching globally. The Wave 3 is a nice looking smartphone that runs the Samsung bada OS. We were hands on with the Wave 3 back in early September.

Samsung calls the Wave 3 smartphone its flagship offering and it has a 4-inch WVGA super AMOLED screen. The Wave 3 also runs a 1.4GHz processor and has a 5MP rear camera with autofocus and a LED flash along with a VGA resolution front camera. It operates on networks that will let it work in countries around the world.

The Wave 3 runs BADA 2.0 and as of today, it is available in Germany, Italy, Russia, as well as the French market it first launched in. Samsung notes the smartphone will come to other countries later this year. There is barely a month left in this year so those other locations will have to come soon. We also heard in September that Bada would go open source in 2012.

Article: RSS via SlashGear

Tags: Bada, Bada 2.0, Samsung, Smartphones, Super AMOLED, Wave 3

Posted in Bada, Samsung, Smartphones | No Comments »

Galaxy Nexus LTE casts slightly larger silhouette

Getting giddy of the thought of an LTE-powered Galaxy Nexus? Well, Google, has just unveiled a full 360-degree view of the Verizon-bound smartphone, and it’s packing a bigger caboose. Around 0.6mm thicker than the HSPA+ version available now in the UK, the 4G-stuffed version loses, at least visually, some of its curved charm and the chin’s become more prominent too. Fortunately, as the tech specs confirm, the slightly bigger body does cram in an extra 100mAh of battery juice, presumably to feed that LTE radio. Will it feel any different in the hand? It looks like we’ll have to wait until Verizon decides to furnish us with one — whenever that is.

Article: RSS via Engadget Mobile

Tags: 4G, Android, Galaxy Nexus, HSPA+, LTE, Samsung, Smartphones, Verizon

Posted in 3G, 4G, Android, Samsung, Smartphones | No Comments »

Samsung Lampoons Apple Mania in Galaxy S II Ad

Samsung attempts to undermine Apple’s mystique and its hold on consumers with a Galaxy S II ad that presents hard core Apple fans as lemmings who are so blinded by marketing that they can’t acknowledge a superior phone.

The ad, which was set to premiere on Facebook Tuesday evening and then hit TV on Thanksgiving, doesn’t mention Apple or the iPhone 4S by name, however. Instead, fans are shown lining up outside an Apple Store-like location nine hours before it opens. “Someone just left,” says one woman. “Why would they be leaving when we’re only nine hours away?” asks her male companion. “Uh oh,” says another guy in line, reading off his phone. “The blogs are saying the battery looks sketchy.”

Just then, a cool group of young men and women come into the line’s view sporting a Samsung Galaxy S II. The crowd is drawn to the phone, although one guy haughtily dismisses it. “I could never get a Samsung,” he says. “I’m creative.” “Dude, you’re a barista,” his friend replies. The ad also makes much of the S II’s 4G compatibility (iPhones are still on 3G), which leads to the kicker: “The next big thing is already here.”

Although the ad takes a new approach, Samsung is hardly the first brand to challenge Apple’s cult-like following. SanDisk bashed “iPuppets” and “iSheep” in 2006 when it took on the iPod’s dominance in the portable MP3 player category. More recently, Motorola attempted to one-up one of Apple’s proudest moment — its legendary “1984″ Macintosh ad — with a Super Bowl ad for the Xoom tablet that, like this latest Samsung commercial, presents Apple followers as clueless automatons.

What do you think? Will Samsung’s approach be successful? Do you give them points for trying? Sound off in the comments.

Article: RSS via Mashable

Tags: 4G, Android, Apple, Galaxy S II, iPhone, Samsung, Smartphones, Video

Posted in 4G, Apple, iPhone, Samsung, Smartphones, Videos | No Comments »

Samsung LED bulbs hit retail shelves

Samsung’s new foray in the LED bulb market has become reality as the products are hitting the shelves now, after being announced back in May. Seven LED bulbs are available and can be plugged in the most common types of lamps/fixtures as a drop-in replacement. LED lights are cool in many ways, but the power consumption (1/4 of a normal bulb) and overall sturdiness is what I like the most about them.  Pricing is what I like the least: at between $20 and $60, they are much more expensive than conventional bulbs, so you will have to figure out when your investment will eventually pay for itself.Also, LED pricing tends to fall and you can expect that manufacturing capacity for those is going to rise in the coming years. A Decade from now, we may even have a capacity surplus, but that’s so far away that we shouldn’t care so much for now.

In any case, Samsung and other manufacturers are jumping into the LED bulb market which is expected to grow intensely for the next decade or more. Samsung has a lot to gain: it can re-use some of the technology that it develops for high-end products like TV and displays, and I suspect that Samsung will also recycle from manufacturing plants – while making a profit on the bulb themselves.

Article: RSS via UberGizmo

Tags: LED, LED Bulbs, Samsung

Posted in Gadget News, Going Green, Samsung | No Comments »

Samsung Google TVs coming 2012

Samsung has reconfirmed it is working on Google TV products, with the Korean company’s TV division chief confirming that the sets would be revealed at an event in 2012. TV department president Yoon Boo-keun revealed the ongoing negotiations this week, Reuters reports, as well as insisting that the Samsung Google TV products would “differ from those of competitors” in an unspecified way.

Samsung’s first batch of Google TV products never actually reached the market. The company developed a set-top box and a Blu-ray player, taking a similar approach to early Google TV partners Logitech and Sony, but after brief demonstrations at CES 2010, failed to launch them commercially.

That reticence doesn’t seem to have harmed Samsung; in the meantime, we’ve seen Sony discount its Google TV sets considerably, and Logitech announce that it had no further plans to release devices using Google’s platform. Existing Logitech Revue owners will get Google TV 2.0, the recently unveiled latest version, but no new hardware is in the pipeline from the company.

Yoon Boo-keun described Samsung’s work with Google on the project as “last-stage talks.” Last week, rumors surfaced regarding LG’s intentions to push out a Google TV range, with the company expected to reveal its first models at CES 2012 in January.

Article: RSS via SlashGear

Tags: Android, Apps, Google, Google TV, Samsung, TV

Posted in Android, Apps, HI-FI, Samsung | No Comments »

European Galaxy Nexus owners complain of erratic volume issue (video)

Samsung’s new flagship smartphone isn’t having the smoothest of beginnings. The strange ROM that cropped up a few days ago turned out to be an isolated incident, but now the forums are abuzz with an audio issue that looks a lot more serious. Essentially, the handset’s volume control appears to have a mind of its own, flitting randomly between mute, full blast and everything in between. The problem has so far only been observed on European phones using the GSM 900MHz band, and it’s exacerbated by the cellular modem either boosting itself in a low reception area or switching between 2G and 3G connections. A user poll over at the XDA Developers forum suggests around 60 percent of owners have experienced the fault. There’s a video after the break, complete with a disappointed kid in the background bugging his dad for answers.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6xlZFcgPlo

Article: RSS via Engadget

Tags: Android, Android 4.0, Galaxy Nexus, Google, Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung, Smartphones, Video

Posted in Android, Google, Samsung, Smartphones, Videos | No Comments »

Samsung Galaxy S3 rumors surface

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is less than a year old, and rumors of its sequel are already starting to surface. According to the folks over at Android and Me who were tipped off by some sources, the Samsung Galaxy S3 will be powered by the Exynos 4412: a 32nm quad-core designed with ARM Cortex-A9 cores running at up to 1.5GHz. The chip was recently spotted in the Linux Kernel archives and is supposed to be under testing by Samsung.

The Exynos 4412 is also expected to feature the ARM Mali-T604 GPU which is touted to deliver an up to 5x performance improvement over previous Mali graphics processors and is scalable up to 4 cores. However, we won’t know for sure until the next Mobile World Congress (February 2012) where the Galaxy S3 is rumored to make its debut.

A Galaxy S3 phone with a quad-core processor seems like the next logical step, seeing how Android phones with quad-core processors seem to be what next year is all about but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Article: RSS via Ubergizmo

Tags: Android, Galaxy S III, Quad-Core, Samsung, Smartphones

Posted in Android, Samsung, Smartphones | No Comments »

Samsung sells Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Germany as workaround to Apple’s design ban

Samsung has begun selling a tweaked version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, where the tablet has been banned following Apple’s legal victory to block the slate for design patent copy-catting issues. The new tablet is called the Galaxy Tab 10.1N and features a modified exterior that is designed around what Apple can seek to block.

A significant part of Apple’s design patent in Europe is the use of edge-to-edge glass for the iPad screen. It appears that Samsung is working around this by adding a slightly thicker frame that wraps around the left and right sides of the Galaxy Tab 10.1N. Other than that tweak and a bump up to Bluetooth 3.0, the hardware should remain relatively unchanged from the previous version of the tablet.

It’s not clear whether this revised hardware design will be able to bypass Apple’s design patent claims, but Samsung is certainly testing the waters to find out. However, Apple also has software design claims against Samsung, such as in the US and Australia that may not be as easily bypassed with this design tweak. Below is an image of the original Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Article: RSS via SlashGear

Tags: Android, Apple, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1N, Germany, Samsung, Tablet PC's

Posted in Android, Apple, Computing, Samsung, Tablet PC's | No Comments »