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Engadget: Having already signed agreements with Ryanair and Qantas to provide service through its OnAir subsidiary, Airbus has been testing equipment to enable the use of GSM handsets for some time; the European Aviation Safety Agency has just blessed the system for commercial use.

European travelers worried that this development is going to lead to a rash of incessant yappers on domestic flights can take some solace in the knowledge that flight attendants will be able to “manage” the service, even shutting off voice entirely while leaving SMS and data active.

Look for the OnAir service to drop initially on short flights in Western Europe, though Airbus intends to take it global.

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TechDigest: Consumer electronics companies make money from selling; they don’t tend to make money from hugging trees. So when you see a company like Dell announcing plans to become the greenest technology company on Earth, you get a sense of why eco-gadgetry is increasingly seen as a vital business strategy by tech firms.

In Dell’s case that involves reducing the carbon intensity of its global operations, planting trees for every notebook and PC it sells. It’s also offering free recycling for used Dell kit. Many technology firms are taking measures, and those that aren’t are increasingly being held to account by the likes of Greenpeace.

The second half of 2007 will see a lot more publicity around how green (or otherwise) our gadget-makers are. Publications like Greenpeace’s Greener Electronics Guide are helping – it ranks PC and mobile manufacturers on how green they are. The latest edition put Lenovo at the top of the list, followed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Dell and Samsung. Sony pitches in at 11th spot, while Apple languishes in 14th.

Does this sort of pressure force companies to up their game? It seems so. Lenovo was bottom of Greenpeace’s previous edition of the report just four months before, while in early May, Apple came out and announced plans to phase out the most toxic chemicals used to manufacture its products. That hasn’t stopped Greenpeace from lobbying to ensure the upcoming iPhone handset is as green as possible though.

What’s clear is that in the next six months, us consumers will have far more information on how green our favourite technology firms are.

So, technology companies see the business benefits of going greener, and there’s going to be much more info available for us consumers to assess whether they’re actually doing it.

What remains to be seen is if that really changes our buying habits – will we resist that tempting 60-inch plasma screen when we find out it hoovers up more electricity than a football stadium? If green gadgetry has a future, it’ll be down to us.

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International Herald Tribune: Matsushita expects to double its production capacity for plasma display panels when a new plant begins production in western Japan in May 2009, a company spokesman said.

The Osaka-based maker of Panasonic-branded electronics plans to manufacture 300,000 42-inch plasma display panels a month at a new plant to be built in the western Japan city of Amagasaki, spokesman Akira Kadota said.

Combined with a planned output increase at another Amagasaki plant that began operating this month, Matsushita will be able to turn out 1.26 million panels a month by May 2009, up from the current 640,000 panels, Kadota said.

Construction of the new plant, Matsushita’s third in Amagasaki, is slated to begin in November, Kadota said. The company currently has four plasma display panel plants in Japan and another one in Shanghai, he added.

The new Amagasaki plant will eventually be able to turn out 1 million plasma displays a month, Kadota said. Matsushita has not yet decided on any production increases after May 2009, he said.

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Monsters and Critics: Just in time for the summer, Samsung has announced the newest line of music players from the company. The U3, which is a small USB direct player that sports five different colors (white, green, pink, blue, and black,) and includes support for Radio Data System (RDS) technology. RDS is used in Europe is and growing in popularity in most portable players.

The FM receiver that comes with the support for RDS is one of the two main features for the new U3. The USB interface allows consumers to simply drag and drop their music on to the device. There is no need to worry about wires or programs Samsung says, just plug it in and go.

Tech wise the new U3 will come with about fifteen hours of battery life. It will support USB 2.0 and is compatible with 1.1 technologies, but USB 2.0 is recommended to achieve the 1.5-hour charge time for the battery over USB. There is a four-line OLED LCD display for track and station information, as well as the compact size of the player, which looks like a pack of gum, weighing 0.05 lbs or 22.8g.

The file types covered are the normal range of music media including, MP3, WMA, OGG, and ASF Audio.

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Electronista: Viewsonic ramped up the quality of its smaller LCD TVs by introducing the 35-series, a new collection of screens that offer stronger image quality without the associated price.

The 26-inch N2635W, 32-inch N3235W, and 37-inch N3735W are all capable of higher than 720p resolution and are relatively bright and fast for the size with a 500-nit brightness and an 8ms pixel response time.

Chin-mounted 20W stereo speakers also provide relatively strong sound for setups where external speakers aren’t an option, and PC video input is standard for an easier hookup with media center computers.

The smallest set features an 800:1 static contrast ratio, according to ViewSonic, while the two larger sets enjoy a deeper 1,200:1 ratio. All sets include component, HDMI, RCA, and S-video; the 37-inch adds DVI for computer input where the smaller screens use analog VGA for older PCs.

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Tech-On: iSuppli has announced results of its survey on the worldwide LCD TV market in the first quarter (1Q) of 2007. Shipments declined 8.0% quarter-on-quarter to 13.992939 million units. According to iSuppli’s analysis, shipments usually decrease QoQ in the 1Q due to a seasonal factor of year-end sale, which takes place in the preceding quarter.

By brand, shipments decreased QoQ at top 5 brands across the board. Samsung Electronics, which topped for two quarters in a row, saw shipments drop 7.3% QoQ to 2.354978 million units.

Samsung Electronics’ favorable performance is attributed to its good management of manufacturing costs and positive attitude toward sales promotion, according to iSuppli.

Sony outperformed and took the position from the preceding quarter’s second Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands. The Dutch company marked the largest shipment decline among the top 5 brands with sales lowering 26.0% QoQ as well. Royal Philips’ slump partly stems from its bad management of LCD panel supply, iSuppli said. The company was also impacted by rival manufacturers.

Ranked fourth was Sharp, which marked an 8.8% QoQ shipment decline to 1.581963 million units, followed by LG Electronics, which posted an 8.3% QoQ decrease to 1.093636 million units. Their shipment shares were 11.31% and 7.82%, respectively.

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Laptop Logic: Toshiba has announced that the Satellite P205, Satellite X205 and Qosmio F45 will be the company’s first mainstream mobile solutions to incorporate HD DVD drives. Moreover, the Qosmio G45 model will the first to get a HD DVD-RW drive.

The Satellite P205, Satellite X205 and Qosmio G45 will be equipped with high-resolution 17-inch diagonal widescreen displays, while the Qosmio F45 will tbe based on 15.4-inch diagonal widescreen display.

Toshiba Satellite X205, Qosmio F45 and Qosmio G45 notebook computers are equipped with an HDMI port and can be connected to any high definition display or television at home, on the road or in a dorm room to deliver pure HD DVD content without fear of image degradation. The Qosmio G45 is capable of output resolutions up to 1080p, while the Satellite X205 will offer an output of up to 1080i output.

In addition to the HD DVD playback, which has resolution six times sharper than the DVD format, the Qosmio G45 notebook computer provides users with a state-of-the-art HD DVD-R optical drive that can burn up to 30 GB of data, including video or entire photo and music libraries, onto a single HD DVD recordable disc.

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Reg Hardware: Samsung unveiled a trio of designer slider-phones, one of which – for the first time – slaps a Yahoo! key right on the front, part of a smart backlit touch-sensitive control panel, for all to see.

That’s the SGH-E950, a 1.5cm-thick tri-band GSM/GPRS/Edge handset with a 2in, 262,144-colour LCD screen on the front and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back. In addition to the customary MP3 player, the E950 has an FM radio. The audio is mixed through Bang & Olufsen’s IcePower sound enhancement technology.

The “metal-finish” E950 has Bluetooth stereo wireless and even a TV connector. There’s 70MB of memory on board, though more can be added using the Micro SD card slot.

The shiny, “mirror-surface” SGH-E840 has a bigger display than the E950 – it’s 2.2in and 240 x 320 – but a lower resolution camera – just two megapixels. Again, it has 70MB of memory, a Micro SD card slot, an FM radio and Bluetooth 2.0. However, it has quad-band network connectivity.

The SGH-J600 will be kitted out in “intense hues” of grey, purple, silver and pink. It’s a tinier model than the others, in size and in specifications. With a 1.9in, 128 x 160, 65,526-color screen, a 1.3-megapixel camera, 20MB of memory and Bluetooth 1.2, it’s dwarfed by its bigger brothers, but like the E950 has a tri-band mobile link.

Samsung has already begun selling the J600 and E840 in Asian countries, and will make the E950 availble there next month. There’s no word yet on worldwide availability.

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HardwareZone: Demand for mobile computers will help global PC shipments to rise 12.2% in 2007 to 256.7 million, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.

The figures reflect a 28% year-on-year increase in portable PC shipments, up from 25% over the previous three quarters.

Desktop shipments also beat expectations for the first quarter, raising the short-term outlook.

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Engdaget: Apple claims that its iPhone will be boasting of 8 hours of chatting, 6 hours of internet and 7 hours of video.

Audio playback has been boosted from 16 to 24 hours, and standby is at a welcome 250 hours.

Of course, Apple does have tendency to exaggerate slightly on the battery life front, but these are promising figures, and should manage to provide a day or two’s worth of solid use out of the thing.

On the screen side, Apple has upgraded the original plastic surface of the phone to some “optical-quality glass” to improve scratch resistance and clarity.

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ZDNet: Larry Weber believes the best is yet to come in plasma televisions. And few people in the world know more about plasma TVs than he does.

Many TV industry insiders would agree that Weber, 59, has left an indelible imprint on the world of consumer electronics. One of the most respected people in the field of plasma research, Weber is technically retired. But the scientist with the trademark long, white beard is not calling it a career just yet.

Weber concocted a way to reduce the power for the display’s circuitry. Today, every color plasma display uses his invention, called an energy recovery sustain circuit, which knocks down power consumption by up to 150 watts.

Here’s an intersting interview with the man, who still maintains that “the best invention for plasma displays hasn’t been done yet.”

Though he retired from Panasonic in 2004, he still whiles away time in his basement working on ways to reduce power consumption, one of plasma’s persistent problems.

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TWICE: Microsoft has agreed to pay $12.3 million (around €9,17 million) for a stake in Chinese television manufacturer Sichuan Changhong Electric and will form a cooperative alliance with the company, according to a Reuters’ report.

The purchase is the equivalent of about a 1% stake in the company, and gives Microsoft the ability to work cooperatively with Changhong Electric “to develop, make and market TVs, computers and other digital home-entertainment products,” according to the report.

Sichuan Changhong Electric, which is a government-backed company, said it would soon present the deal to its board for approval.

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