about-electronics.eu

NaviGadget: Samsung is expanding its touch screen high resolution camera phone line up with Samsung PIXON M8800.

It is expected to hit the shelves in many European countries as early as this month or early November for an unknown price but you can expect to pay around 550 € for this slim ( 13.8mm to be exact) phone with a really sharp 3.2″ touch screen.

It is not just the 8MP camera that makes the Samsung PIXON M8800 really high-end.

It is loaded with features. Take the integrated GPS receiver for example, or the accelerometer, or the crazy connectivity you get with Quad-band GSM, tri-band HSDPA, bluetooth, and FM radio.

read more

Electronista: DivX and Samsung on Wednesday announced high-end Samsung HDTVs will support high-quality DivX video files under a multiyear agreement.

The DivX Certified HDTVs should be available worldwide at the beginning of 2009, and will be able to playback DivX media files stored on USB devices or a DLNA-certified Ethernet connection. Samsung already offers DivX-certified products that range from cellphones to DVD players.

DivX is a high-quality video codec that keeps file sizes small by using lossy MPEG-4 ASP compression. It is commonly used on downloadable files and its adoption in Samsung TVs will let users enjoy content created on or acquired from their PC in their living room.

read more

Techradar: Samsung has confirmed that it will ‘adjust’ production after sales of televisions slumped in recent months.

Television has been a massive growth industry in the past few years, with the inflated world economy pushing up sales, but the credit crunch has hit hard and Samsung has been forced to respond.

“As demand is weakening, we are responding in a flexible manner through output control,” James Chung, a company spokesman told Reuters.

Samsung is the largest producer of LCD panels, but rumours that production will be reduced by as much as five per cent have been downplayed.

read more

Register Hardware: Microsoft has commissioned two of the biggest names in consumer electronics to manufacture a Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360, market sources have claimed.

A joint venture between Samsung and Toshiba has been tasked with making the add-on drives for the console, an Xbit Labs report maintains. Although the drive’s technical specifications are still unknown, it’s alleged that the Blu-ray player will sell for between €73-110.
 
Exactly when – or, indeed, if – the Xbox Blu-ray drive will appear in the shops isn’t known either. But with the Christmas season rapidly approaching, and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) following it in Las Vegas in early January, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the drive could appear sometime between now and early 2009.

Microsoft claimed back in May this year that it had “no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360”.

read more

HD News: Designed to complement their ‘Rose Red’ series of LCD TV’s, Samsung’s HT-X715 home cinema solution makes a stunning stylistic addition to your Hi-Fi setup.

With the same subtle deep red tones and some gorgeous curves, Samsung’s out of the box solution includes two front speakers, two rear speakers, a centre speaker and subwoofer for 5.1 surround sound.

The built-in DVD player upscales to 1080p and you also get DivX playback along with HDMI and USB connectivity.

The HT-X715 is Bluetooth enabled which gives you the ability to play MP3 tracks straight from your mobile phone or PC.

read more

Techradar.com: Samsung has never been very good at keeping its cards close to its chest, and the leak of the new i7110 is no exception. A 5MP slimline candybar handset, it combines all the looks of recent handsets into its teeny form factor.

Running the Symbian S60 UI, it will feel familiar for a huge number of Symbian users worldwide, and the optical joystick that is loved or loathed by many Samsung owners has another outing in this handset.

HSDPA is served up as you might expect, along with a 2.6-inch 16m colour display, with the obvious accelerometer for screen flippage. It also packs Wi-Fi with DLNA compatibility, so you can share things with your PC or PS3 home network with ease.

read more

Electronista: Samsung has introduced two new flip-phone designs, the SCH-W570 and SPH-W5700.

The phones are unusual for both relying on twin 2.2-inch LCDs; while a standard display is located on the inside, a screen of the same size is located on the outside, with its own touch-based interface used for accessing functions like video and music playback. This also enables use of the phones while closed.

Although details of the W5700 are uncertain, both phones should support 3G broadband through WCDMA, identified as tri-band HSDPA in the case of the W570. The latter is also known to have Bluetooth, a three-megapixel camera and DMB TV reception, as well as expansion support through a microSD slot. The phones are currently exclusive to South Korea.

read more

InformationWeek: Samsung is rolling out a powerful touch-screen handset that may make carrying around a separate camera unnecessary.

The main draw of the M8800 Pixon will be the 8-megapixel camera that comes with built-in dual LED flash, advanced shake reduction, face-detecting technology, and auto-focusing. The camera is also capable of recording high-quality video at 30 frames per second.

“Now everyone will be able to ‘get their pics on’ so much more quickly and easily. For the first time you will have a camera on your phone capable of delivering the quality of image of a regular camera,” said Geesung Choi, president of Samsung’s telecommunications business, in a statement.

The handset also has a GPS chip for geo-tagging photos as well as assisted GPS, but the lack of Wi-Fi may turn some off.

Samsung said the Pixon will be available in France in mid-October, and it will roll out to other markets shortly after.

read more

Electronista: Samsung on Friday stepped up its efforts to lead touchscreen phones with the launch of the AnyCall Haptic 2, the second generation of its device in one year to rely on its namesake vibration feedback technology to simulate physical button presses on its screen.

The quick follow-up to the March original is distinguished by its customization: users can personalize the vibrate mode and have access to more than three times the number of widgets on the home screen for quick access to weather and other info.

It also brings a much sharper five-megapixel camera with flash and image stabilization as well as built-in storage of either 4GB or 16GB depending on the model.

read more

IntoMobile: Samsung is out with the second Armani phone. Unlike the original device which relied almost exclusively on a touchscreen, the Armani M75500 Night Effect is a candybar-shaped device with regular numeric keypad.

The design of the device is quite simplistic, yet elegant as I’m sure you can see from the image above. The large “Emporio Armani” branding is there to remind everyone around you this isn’t a regular phone, but an Armani-approved device.

Specs wise, the Samsung Armani 2 sports a 2.2-inch AMOLED screen, 3.2 megapixel camera without flash, FM radio, Bluetooth, HSDPA support, dedicated music control keys, and 120MB of memory that is further expandable with microSD cards.

Emporio Armani Samsung M75500 Night Effect is set to hit Europe in November.

read more

PC World: SanDisk has rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from hardware maker Samsung Electronics, saying that it undervalues the maker of flash storage cards.

The two companies had been in takeover talks for about four months, but Samsung went public with its offer Tuesday, apparently after discussions had broken down.

“Our offer insulates your shareholders from the risk of market conditions that have severely deteriorated and are expected to remain challenging,” Samsung Vice Chairman and CEO Yoon-Woo Lee wrote in a letter to SanDisk executives that Samsung released Tuesday.

SanDisk Chairman and CEO Eli Harari responded quickly, saying in a statement his company is willing to discuss a takeover, but that the per share offer “is opportunistically timed at the trough of an industry-wide downturn” and undervalues the flash card maker.

read more

T3: A new report from ABI Research claims that the touch screen industry in the mobile device market will be worth $5 billion (3.5 billion euro) in 2009.

ABI says that shipments of touch screen devices in 2007 increased by 91% over 2006. The report figures in touch screens used in mobile phones, MIDs, UMPCs and navigation devices.

ABI says that Samsung and Motorola command the bulk of the touch screen mobile phone market with 33% and 30% of the market respectively. This is based on strong presence in Asian markets where 80% of the world’s touch screen phones are produced. Sony Ericsson has 24% of the touch screen market.

read more