Digital Gadgets

The Megapixel Race Continues with Samsung’s 10mp Sch-B600

Electronics Co. unveiled yesterday the world’s first 10-megapixel camera phone at the CeBIT electronics show in Germany, the company said in an emailed statement. The new phone (SCH-B600) represents the latest in a string of firsts for the Korean tech giant in the mobile convergence market.

This new device for its home Korean market sports a massive 10 megapixel sensor mated to a 3x optical zoom auto-focus lens that telescopes out of the back of the phone when activated - just like a normal, dedicated point and shoot camera. The thing is, even dedicated point and shoot cameras aren’t using 10 megapixel sensors. A microMMC memory card slot offers plenty of expansion for those massive photos.

Samsung last year introduced the world’s first 7-megapixel and 8-megapixel camera phones. Ever hold a ten megapixel cameraphone? Naw, neither had we, not until today anyway. Straight from the floor at CeBIT, we’ve got the Samsung SCH-B600 with an integrated 10 megapixel shooter. It’s never gonna come anywhere close to the US or Europe so nuzzle up to your monitor real close-like and take in this beauty.

“The 10 megapixel phone belongs to a different level with other camera phones. Samsung was the first company to introduce a camera phone in the world. And we will continue to bring products with more advanced optical technologies”, said Kitae Lee, head of Samsung’s telecom business.

“We have many researchers who are specialized in optical science and they will help us catch up with famous optic technology firms such as Carl Zeiss and Schneider soon”, he added.The handset’s 10-megapixel digital camera features a 3x optical zoom , 5x digital zoom, and a shutter speed as fast as 1/2000th of a second. Auto focus and fill-light functions will also be employed to deliver higher-resolution photographs.

Needless to say, this will be one of Samsung’s higher-end mobile phones, designed for consumers with a fair bit of spare pocket change.In a first for a camera phone, the new offering also has an auxiliary auto focus light, allowing user to better capture images in the dark. The phone can also play music and receive satellite television broadcasts.

Samsung hopes to begin selling it in the second quarter. The price has yet to be set. Samsung’s 7-megapixel camera, SCH-V770, currently retails at around $1,000. Samsung again adopted the “dual face” design for the mobile, which looks like a bar-type phone on one side and a digital camera when flipped. Lee forecast that this year will herald big changes in the cellular phone market, including the emergence of new mobile convergence products.

The phone is equipped with a 2-inch, 16-million-pixel color TFT LCD, supports satellite digital multimedia broadcasting services and comes with a dual-face and dual-speaker system. It also includes TV-out and MP3 player functions. Earlier this week, Samsung unveiled what it said is the first smart phone equipped with an 8-Gbyte hard disk drive. The SGH-i310 combines a phone, a digital camera and an MP3 player that can store about 2,000 songs.

Introduction

In the course of the slid year, the devices ultrathin you have outsold all far away the other designs of the telephone. Poichè Motorola has dominated the market with the RAZR, many suppliers who have been interfered outside-guard scrambled in order to generate the thin telephones of their own ones. The last Samsung month has freed Mm-a900, relative the first thin telephone.

But being virtually identical to the RAZR in the shape and the function, it has been only met lukewarm enthusiasm. Hour Samsung the relative new hopes more best correctly Sgh-t809 will. Smarrendo from the cover typical of the telephone of vibration, the T809 be impaccato in a design polish of the cursore. Generating one first hitting impression, the T809 characterizes a great screen of full-color, being similar the look and the tact of the televisions high-end of the plasma. Enough thin to insert in the consumers the pockets, the T809 offers 1.3-megapixel an integrated camera, player MP3 with the loudspeakers external stereos and the technology without threads of Bluetooth in order to assess it does not remain hidden long in order.

Plans to be that the ultrathin telephones are better vendors currently, it is surprised that one the measures lucide T809 under 0.6-inches thin. Constructed of plastic, rather than of the metal-alloy like the RAZR and A900, the T809 is a light weight hardly to disopra the 3,0 ounces, but difetta of the rigidity and tact that sturdy the devices previous you have had. Being wider than other telephones, the greater part of the front panel visualizes prominente a great screen of tip of the progress 262K-color. Over, the customers can block to the photos to uneven angle and the video clip with the objective of camera poured them 1.3-megapixel. Under, a 5-way that the navigation keyboard is encircled from Dial, that it removes, that cancels and left skillful keys and.

The external loudspeakers on the inferior angles supply a experience to the open to listen to for music and the sounds. From the part of left, the keys of the volume record the telephone receiver and modify the levels the tonality during the calls and standby, while headset a Jack allows that the listeners enjoy music privately. The just edge contains a rabbet of the card of memory of TransFlash for additional space useful in order to store lime the MP3 and the photos. Opened made to slide, the numerical keyboard is revealed offering comfortable and convenient navigation of menu and messaging of text through text the T9 estimate. From the box it, the Samsung Sgh-t809 comes with a champion battery of Li-Ione from 800 mAh, the race loader, headset handsfree the stereo, gives you of the USB alloy, 32 card of mb TransFlash, CD of the study of the PC and handbook of the customer.

Mobile phone windows “world’s smallest” in AXiA markets A308

The HTC Tornado Smartphone might be just a touch smaller than the 0.8×1.9×4.5-inch AXIA A308 PDA phone, but that didn’t stop the Malaysian manufacturer from marketing its product as the “world’s smallest PDA Phone on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 featuring Wifi connectivity.”

Malaysian manufacturer AXIA is claiming to have the “world’s smallest PDA Phone on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 featuring WiFi connectivity,” in their new A308 device.

Fifth Media Sdn. Bhd. announced the launch of the world’s smallest PDA phone running on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 OS, AXIA A308.

Measuring only 0.8 x 1.9 x 4.5 inch in size, the handset offers a lot of power thanks to a 416MHz Intel CPU and comes with a 2.2 inch QVGA LCD, 1.3 megapixel camera and miniSD slot.

At 0.8×1.9×4.5-inch the phone is a tad larger than the HTC Tornado Smartphone, but the A308 goes for full PDA functionality with its 2.2-inch QVGA LCD.

In terms of connectivity, AXIA A308 is a quad-phone featuring GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth and WiFi. “Its compact size and built-in WiFi will set this device apart as a business tool” is the opinion of Bernard Bowiz, Chief Technical Adviser of Fifth Media Sdn. Bhd.

Despite its diminutive stature, the AXIA A308 still manages to pack in the goodies. High speed data transfer is easily addressed with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, IrDA, and EDGE compatibility, and the 416MHz Intel CPU is quite nice as well. Other features include an integrated 1.3 megapixel camera, 2.2-inch TFT LCD touchscreen, and miniSD expansion.

Along with the WiFi, AXIA has crammed in Bluetooth, EDGE, miniSD, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a pleasantly fast 416MHz Intel CPU. Looks good to us, world’s smallest or not.The first AXIA PDA Phone, the A108, was well received when it was introduced last year at the CeBIT exhibition. AXIA A308 is the latest model of the series of PDA phones which combines the familiar form of a regular phone with full PDA functions.

As of yet, no exact pricing or launch information has been made available, but more deets should surface when AXIA makes a more official showing at this month’s CeBit show.

Julius Grohe, Fifth Media’s Director of Global Sales states: “There are no devices currently in the market that delivers on the AXIA A308’s unique proposition of being a compact PDA Phone with WiFi capabilities. Furthermore, the pricing of the AXIA A308 will make the device very attractive.” (Krishana Raghav)

Day One with the Palm Treo 650

Treo 650 died of complications resulting from the 1.17 firmware update. I received my replacement Treo 650 through the Warranty Exchange program offered by Cingular about a week ago, and so far the new Treo has worked like a dream.

I understand the Palm Treo 650 is nothing new. I understand that its really old news. What is new about all this is that I am going to try to use this phone, a PALM OS phone, over the stack of Windows Mobile Phones I have laying around. This is part of an ongoing effort started by myself to learn more about the “other” companies OS versions.

The 1st thing I did was charged it for a while. Then I loaded up the software and saw a familiar face from the past, HotSync!

Knowing little about today’s Palm OS, what I saw next was a shocker. I was asked to press the button on the sync cable and when I did, the software started to whirl! An option came up on the screen asking me if I wanted to sync with some program I didn’t pay attention to or Microsoft Outlook. Well, what do you think I chose? Considering Outlook contains my entire life, Outlook. This was a PLEASANT surprise I was not expecting. ATTN MICROSOFT!!!! Want to make it easy for Palm users to join our fight? Offer this functionality in reverse for Active Sync!!!

I spent a good part of the day on this phone without using any headsets, etc. The reception was good and the conversations were clear as could be. I asked each person I spoke with how I sounded and they all said I was just fine! Total talk time was around 3 hours today. An hour and a half was with one friend of mine and the phone never became uncomfortable. I am hope 13 hours after my day began with 100% charge and the indicator shows a tad over 50% life.

I had attempted to upgrade my old handset to 1.17 according to the directions provided by Palm and Cingular, but the firmware update didn’t go smoothly and I had to repeat the process more than once. The update made the old Treo very unreliable, resulting in periodic White Screens of Death when I ran the Chatter Email application on it.

Mark Blanc, the author of Chatter Email had suggested that there was no conflict between Chatter Email 1.1.4.3p and the 1.17 firmware. From what I’ve seen since I got my replacement Treo 650, he’s right.

My observations for today:

Blaze, the built in web browser, is horrible. I haven’t taken the time to see if there is any settings to make webpages not look BAD. I am definitely not in Windows Land anymore.

Since I started using a Treo with the 1.17 firmware update, I’ve noticed much better support for my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset. The Treo tries to connect to the headset whenever a call is placed or received. This makes a lot more sense than the previous behavior, which required me to press the action button on the side of the headset.

The lesson I’ve learned from my firmware update failure is this: from now on I’m only doing a firmware update if the performance enhancements offered by the update specifically address a problem I’ve recently experienced with my Treo. In other words, I’m not doing anymore updates just to stay current.