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.

Hands-on with the Samsung Q1 / Origami

So we managed to get our hands on a Samsung Q1 / Origami device set to roll tomorrow here at CeBIT. Don’t ask how, but it’ll be awhile before we recover from the brutal caning we just received. From the five minutes we spent with it we can tell you, well, it’s an XP Tablet PC with a 7-inch display. Sorry, that’s about it, nothing earth-shattering here folks. In fact, for all the hype, it’s hard to find anything revolutionary or even evolutionary in the hardware specs or loaded software (perhaps that will come when the price is announced). Sure, Samsung did call it a prototype unit, but as the final prototype prior to manufacture we’re told not much will change besides a “brighter TFT LCD.”

Now, beyond what we saw earlier today, Samsung will release their UMPC / Origami device with optional GPS and DMB (and presumably DVB too, eventually) mobile digital TV expansion modules, as well as WiBRO support for when that goes live in Korea around June.

The version we grabbed, the Q1, also supports Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and sports a 30GB hard disk. Unfortunately the whole thing just felt wrong in the hands – very plasticy and without substance. Take a look for yourselves after the break, we’ve got tons more shots.

So what is Origami? We’ll tell ya

Yesterday we had a chance to get Otto Berkes on the line, the man behind Origami at Microsoft, as well as Dustin Hubbard, Group Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Hardware and Application Development team. We had a few things to ask about what the deal is with UMPCs and Origami, here’s what we learned: Origami is a term originated from Berkes that doesn’t necessarily refer to a device or specific hardware specification, per se, but to an ultramobile PC running Windows Tablet (or Vista, later) and enhanced Microsoft Touch Pack (a suite of apps and utilities meant to optimize using Windows by touch, and not necessarily only by stylus).

Touch Pack consists of a launcher app that better groups and opens apps based on a touchscreen interface; DialKeys, a thumb-based text input system that uses those two onscreen touch inputs on either side; Touch Improvements, a suite of environment optimizations to make using Windows with your fingers a less painful experience; and some other stuff, like Sudoku and an Origami-optimized Windows Media skin to kind of round out the whole thing.

Otto made it pretty clear that Microsoft is aiming UMPCs based on Tablet with Touch Pack at the general consumer, and not necessarily as another device for the already gadget-laden mobile office — we’ll be seeing (and have already seen) initially launches by the likes of Samsung, Asus, and Founder, so keep an eye out for those today.

We did ask about Alexandria, the other Microsoft buzz-video / project we saw the other day, and it sounded like a system MS was working to ease acquiring music and movies online — is Alexandria a service that might be an iTunes-killer, perhaps? We don’t know (we’re working on finding out), but we do finally know what the hell Origami is, and now you do too.

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.

Samsung i750 news: approved in USA by FCC + to be presented at CeBIT 2006

It’s been a long time coming, but Samsung’s i750 smartphone that we saw back in March last year has finally made its way to the US — well, at least to the FCC website. It’s very similar to Samsung’s own i730 except that it replaces the QWERTY keyboard with a numeric keypad, the EV-DO with EDGE, the 1.3 megapixel camera with a 2 megapixel one, and the SD slot with TransFlash.

Last year, at CeBIT 2005, we have seen Samsung presenting the Samsung i750 Pocket PC phone (the one to the left) and now German magazine Connect is reporting that at CeBIT 2006 Samsung will be presenting this phone again, but this time with additional features:

apparently i750 will be presented with OCR software that will run in this phone and will convert images taken with the 2 megapixel camera of this phone to texts, that will be imported to pocket Outlook.

So we guess that is mixing it up quite a bit, but the form factor has remained the same, Bluetooth and WiFi are still here, and unfortunately so is the OS — Windows Mobile 2003 SE is still alive on this phone which doesn’t even have a ship date yet.