Filed under: Digital Cameras

When Samsung decided to target the more discriminating consumer with its NV-series (NV = New Voyage — thrilling!) of “Lifestyle” digicams, it chose to forgo the rather staid aesthetic of most of its older models for more distinctive, high quality designs — but as with so many other “fashionable” products, The Photography Blog reports that you’re getting more sizzle than steak when it comes to the seven megapixel NV7. On first glance it would seem that this hybrid cam has the potential to be a real winner: besides the attractive looks and tight build quality, you’re getting a Schneider lens with long 7x optical zoom, a welcome tag team of digital as well as optical image stabilization, and several manual control options for finicky photographers. Unfortunately, for all its attractive features, the NV7 just don’t take a very good picture. While it supposedly handles chromatic aberrations well and makes good use of that optical stabilization, images tend to come out looking very noisy, even at a low ISO 100 (maximum ISO is 1000, but both that setting and ISO 800 and reportedly unusable). Other faults include the rather ineffective digital Advanced Shake Reduction option, a steep learning curve for getting accustomed to the 13 unlabeled soft keys bordering the 2.5-inch LCD, and the fact that optical stabilization turns off after every shutdown. But the main problem here is those grainy images, so unless you’re willing to overlook picture quality for eye-catching design, it sounds like you’re best off spending your ~$475 on a shooter that gives you better performance.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Announcements, HDTV

Hard to believe Black Friday is almost upon us, but here we are, literally giving away another HDTV — Samsung’s LED DLP HL-S5679W. Specs:

• 56-inch LED backlit 1080p display
• DNIe video enhancer and Cinema Smooth light engine
• 4,000:1 contrast ratio
• Built-in NTSC / ATSC tuners with PIP
• 2 HDMI, 2 component, 3 composite, and 2 S-Video inputs
• We’re also throwing in a 6-foot HDMI cable from eHDMI

Do yourself a favor and enter to win it over at Engadget HD, ok?

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Ever since the first digital camcorders hit the market, manufacturers have competed with each other to see who could up the digital zoom on their cameras to the highest level, each time proudly displaying their camera’s capability to turn light into pixelated nonsense with stickers on the side of the lens. Although Samsung is guilty of placing absurdly high digital zooms on its cameras as well, the company’s recent unveiling of the VM-DC560 with a 26x optical zoom — which doesn’t result in quality degradation, unlike digital zooms — certainly makes amends. Besides the peeping tom’s best friend of a lens, the VM-DC560 also includes a 1.1 megapixel CCD (presumably for still shots), a dual layer recordable mini-DVD drive, and a 2.6 inch widescreen LCD, all in a relatively standard looking gray case. No word on pricing or availability, although we’d bet on birdwatchers in the far east being the first to get their hands on it.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia gets the lion’s share of the attention when it comes to the S60 platform and Symbian generally — perhaps rightfully so, considering they ship far more Symbian-based smartphones than any other vendor — but Samsung would like to politely remind everyone that they’re an S60 licensee, too. Their latest effort, the SGH-i520 slider, had its coming-out party this week at the Symbian Smartphone Show, and the spec sheet looks to give Nokia’s E- and N-series multimedia powerhouses an honest-to-goodness run for their money. The typical 2-megapixel camera and QVGA display aside, the i520 packs an HSDPA radio — something no released Nokia handset has managed to do; granted, the N95 does it, but we’ve got a little wait ahead of us for that monster. Lucky owners also get a microSD slot should they find the 45MB of usable storage a bit light, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, and a front-facing VGA shooter for those ever-popular video calls. Per protocol, it doesn’t seem that a US launch is in the works, but one can never be sure; stranger things have happened.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

We’ve just come across a complete review of Samsung‘s Q1-SSD UMPC, the first device in its class with a solid state NAND flash drive. Sammy’s had some ups and downs with its Q1 devices over the last few months, giving us all the more reason to wonder what Riyad Emeran of TrustedReviews had to say about it. The verdict? That 32GB flash drive is pretty freakin’ fast — Emeran noted the Q1-SSD booted in a snappy 22 seconds, notched a PCMark hard drive score of 5895 (more than twice as fast as an HP Compaq nc2400), and was able to perform a complete system restore in just over four minutes. However, that performance increase for the flash drive doesn’t translate into as large of a battery life jump as we’d like, given that the battery only lasts about three hours, compared to two hours on the original Q1. But the worst aspect of the Q1-SSD, as TrustedReviews notes, is the fact that its retail price is £1,400 ($2,663) — double the original MSRP of the Q1 (£700, or $1,331). For that level of coinage, you may just want to stick to the pokey-but-slim Compaq nc2400 to lighten your gadget bag.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

You’ll have to forgive us, as our Dutch is a bit rusty, but perhaps some of you Netherlands-based folks can help us decipher this new Samsung SDC-MS21 that GadgetZone.nl spotted at IFA. Fortunately, specs can be understood in any language: this one features 6 megapixel, 2.5-inch screen, 3x optical zoom, ISO 1600, MP3 playback, SD card slot, 640 x 480 video at 30 fps. We’re also pretty sure that the SDC-MS21 can be used as a voice recorder and a webcam, and also appears to us like it’s an upgrade or possibly an addition to the Miniket line that we saw last year. Oh, and one more detail that we were able to glean from hours of pouring over our Dutch dictionaries and grammar books: it’s red.

[Thanks, Robert]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Samsung’s back at the DSLR game with their new GX-10, followup to the GX-1 (and GX-1L, and GX-1S) and GX-2, which brings home a 10.2 megapixel dust-resistant CCD, optical image stabilization, 2.5-inch display, RAW support, lens mount support for Pentax, KAF2, KAF and KA lenses, and an October release. Unfortunately we’ve no more details than those right now, so stay tuned as we wait to hear more about Korea’s latest conquest on the primarily European, American, and Japanese-driven camera market.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Storage

It’s been barely 10 days since we discussed 8 and 16GB SD cards, but today, Samsung announced today that it has developed the world’s first 40-nanometer memory device, allowing for 32 and 64GB CompactFlash cards. According to the company’s press release, the new design uses a Charge Trap Flash architecture, which “reduces inter-cell noise levels.” Oh, and remember when we asked if anyone had figured out the Moore’s Law for flash memory? Turns out Samsung has: “Introduction of a 40nm manufacturing process for 32Gb NAND flash marks the seventh generation of NAND flash that follows the New Memory Growth Theory of double-density growth every 12 months, which was first presented by Dr. Chang Gyu Hwang, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business in a keynote address at ISSCC 2002.” By those calculations, we should have laptops with flash memory within a year.

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Filed under: Cellphones

This one’s a little difficult to explain, but it would appear that a Cingular developer’s site of some kind is under construction at a design firm’s domain, and in it they show with some accuracy their 2006 roadmap, including two new devices we hadn’t yet seen coming to Cingular: the BlackBerry Pearl 8100c (due Q4) and the Samsung Blackjack SGH-i607 (due Q3, which will be ending in short order). The specs on the quad-band Pearl look to be in place and has that tweaked appearance, and the i607 pictured retains the i600‘s front-facing camera, as well as quad-band GSM / GSRS / EDGE / HSDPA data, and Bluetooth; of course, we knew the Pearl was headed to Cingular, but the Blackjack will make a nice little addition to the cadre of Q-killers making their way to the states.

P.S. -Oh, and the 8525 is listed as Q3, too. Big surprise.

[Thanks, Jaybo]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Much like Pioneer, Samsung is still bumming us out by not whipping up a combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. But good ol’ Sammy is announcing its first Blu-ray player, the BD-P1000, to be released in Europe in October 2006, with price estimates reaching €1,400. It’s due to go head-to-head with Toshiba’s HD-E1 and HD-XE1, which ares due to come out the following month. Guys, can’t we bury this hatchet already and just settle this war? It’s obvious that building a hybrid player is entirely possible, and to motivate you to get on it we’re officially going to sulk and go on hunger strike. Go on, try us.

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It seems service provider or cellphone maker these days is starting their own digital music store. Not one to be left out, Samsung’s announced that they will make their own line of digital music players that work with their own proprietary download service.

Samsung’s already got the digital music player side down, making swanky devices like the YP-K5, but will their agreement with MusicNet be enough to get them into third or fourth place behind iTunes and other already-established music services?

The music store is expected to launch later this year. – Jason Chen

Samsung to launch music download service [Reuters via Crunchgear]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Yet more news outta IFA today, with Samsung taking the occasion to announce a new compact digital camera for anyone looking for a little widescreen action. The SDC-MS61 is a six megapixel cam with a 3x optical zoom that’ll take pics at up to ISO 1600, as well as 30fps MPEG-4 video in 16:9 aspect ratio (which should give your home movies that much-needed cinematic edge). You’ll also be able to view those vids properly thanks to the camera’s 3.0-inch widescreen LCD on the rear. The MS61 will also double as a webcam and an MP3 player/recorder, although little details like price and availability have yet to be made readily available.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

Those pranksters at Samsung are always mixing up the display sizes on us, and now they’ve thrown down a 16:9 widescreen 10-incher for your DMB viewing pleasure. The R7 features MP3 and photo playback, and can even handle an external drive for viewing video, but it seems mostly suited to lounging around the home with some up-close and personal DMB broadcasts. Samsung wants to move the TV from a “fixed, family-oriented device to a more mobile, personal gadget.” We’re not so sure that ethic would go over so hot if verbalized in the States, but it’s not like they’ll be shipping it over here anyways, so the point is moot.

[Thanks, Dan]

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Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Now we’re talking. Or, well, continuing an ongoing conversation. Samsung seems to have a little spec bump for the Q1 every week or so: a flash drive here, a new processor there, but this time they’re doing it up right and sticking HSDPA into their UMPC. The new “Q1P” also packs that new Via processor from the Q1B, which extends the battery to a purported five hours. The Q1 really does take on a whole new level of hotness with a respectable battery life and 3G internet access, and supposedly the Q1P will include “several additional interfaces” as well — whatever that means. We sure wouldn’t complain to have an easier time interfacing with the thing when it’s released Q4 this year, but we’re not going to get our hopes up too high.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Filed under: Laptops

Mmmm, that tasty Samsung Q35 just went Core 2 Duo. And from the looks of things, that’s the only change you’re gonna see; same 12.1-inch widescreen display, 80GB SATA disk, up to 1GB memory, and integrated Intel graphics swaddled in a sleek, 4-pound ultra-porable. Still, while the new proc won’t be any more efficient with the juice than the Q35′s former Core Duo, that promised 20% boost in performance ain’t chicken feed. Most of all, kudos to you Sammy for not calling this the World’s Smallest Core 2 Duo laptop held by a prostrate, shoeless waif. Nice to see a bit of restraint on this one. Also announced is the less interesting 15.4-inch, R55 with that same 1.8GHz T5600 Core 2 Duo proc, disk, and RAM but with GeForce Go 7600 graphics for that extra bit of oomph. Stay tuned for the deluge of Core 2 Duo lappies to come dear readers.

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Filed under: Displays

Ever the forerunner in anything that might get them a “World’s _____” designation on one of their products, Samsung was showing of a couple of AMOLED display-equipped devices at IMID 2006, going down in Daegu, Korea right now. The newish display technology combines two champs of display tech: active matrix, and organic light emitting diodes, which seems adept at providing great color rendering uniformity while also bumping up brightness and the display’s contrast ratio. Where the viewing angle starts to degrade (30 degrees) sounds a little harsh to us, but a portable with a 2000:1 contrast ratio, 520cd/m² brightness, 16 million color gamut, and 0.01ms pixel reponse time isn’t anything to sneeze at. Unfortunately the device vehicles for their new 4.3-inch and 2.4-inch diagonal displays are probably unlikely to find themselves in consumer hands any time soon, but if nothing else they serve as a head turning introduction to the new display tech.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Sure, those 100-inch LCDs are all well and good if your living room happens to encompass a large international tradeshow at all times, but if you’d prefer an LCD TV you can actually purchase and lug home for reals, Samsung’s new 70-incher is your biggest option yet. They’re busting out this monster in the first half of 2007, and are packing in all the niceties like a 2000:1 contrast ratio, a sub-8ms response time, 600 nits of brightness and of course a juicy 1080p resolution. The display bests the 65-incher from Sharp which currently holds the LCD throne, and Samsung will be showing it off at the upcoming International Meeting on Information Displays on the 23rd of this month — where we doubt it will fail to impress.

[Via HD Beat, thanks Nandini]

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Filed under: Displays, Wireless

We all know that Sony’s been doing their LocationFree wireless TV gig for years, right? Still, that little fact won’t stop Samsung from stretching for yet another world’s first by introducing the SPD-50P7HDT which they call the “world’s first large-size HD-compatible wireless PDP TV.” Yeah, whutevs Sammy, if it makes you feel better then go ahead, call it. The new 50-inch Plasma Display Panel supports an unspecified high-def resolution and touts the inclusion of a wireless AV center to float the TV upon your wall (nearly) cable-free. Apparently, the AV center is the mystery box on the shelf below the PDP in the picture above which will magically bundle the various signals from your tethered devices such as DVD, set-top box, etc. and then feed ‘em up to the TV over 802.11a WiFi. Yeah, 802.11a — at least that’s what’s being reported in the digital rags. However, we’d love to see Samsung slip in a little UWB which we’ve already seen them playing around with as a more appropriate short-haul cable replacement. Maybe the official specs will hold a surprise once released… hey, we can dream can’t we? Suggested retail is about 4,800,000 South Korean Wan or about $5,000 of the green stuff if it this kit ever ships Stateside.

[Via Akihabara News]

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Filed under: Laptops

Proving once again that people seem to be willing to overpay for underpowered gadgets that could possibly be seen as “fashionable,” Samsung has released a new £1,300 ($2,460) notebook whose main (read: only) selling point is its bright pink exterior. At this price point we’d expect to see words like “Core Duo” and “GeForce” on the spec sheet, but the new 12.1-inch Q40 only manages to throw down a disappointing 1.2GHz ULV Core Solo processor, just 512MB of RAM, a scant 60GB hard drive capacity, and those integrated Intel graphics which will only please gamers who are into Minesweeper and Sudoku. Still, you are getting a built-in DVD burner and Windows XP Professional as the operating system, so this lappy isn’t a total lost cause. Although the shiny Q40 is available exclusively at PC World, we have a feeling that you’ll soon be seeing it in the hands of celebutantes worldwide, and perhaps even being given away as a door prize on a future episode of My Super Sweet 16.

[Via Shiny Shiny]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Displays

Samsung has taken the wraps off what they claim to to be the world’s first 3-inch VGA LCD that meets industry standards for use in digital cameras. With a 300nit brightness and 350:1 contrast ration, the 640 x 480 LCD also promises to consume less power than displays currently used in digital cameras, operating on a 30Hz source driver instead of the 60Hz commonly used now, as well as employing a so-called “dot inversion scheme” that reduces flickering associated with 30Hz LCDs. We’re assuming the water is intended to show how sharp the image is, not that it’s waterproof, but you never know. Commercial production is set to begin in the first half of 2007.

[Via Photography Blog]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We hate to up the pundit wars, but we aren’t the ones that released the same titles on both Blu-ray and HD DVD — Warner Home Video did. Thanks to them though, the two high-def camps can now size up their formats mano-a-mano via Training Day, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Rumor Has It. HighDefDigest took the 1080i Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player along with the noisy 1080p Samsung BDP-1000 Blu-ray player and hooked ‘em up to their HP Pavilion reference HDTV via HDMI. All three titles suffered from similar issues of extra noise on the Blu-ray side, and appeared just a tad darker then their HD DVD counterparts. An issue with cropping also popped up that we highly doubt anyone would notice unless they too have both players side by side, but the reviewers noticed less of a picture on all three Blu-ray titles even though they shared the same advertised aspect ratios as the HD DVDs. This brings up the question however, if this cropping is caused by the Blu-ray format, a bad Blu-ray master, or the Samsung player? We are willing to bet on latter most of the three, but we won’t be able to find out until Pioneer or Panasonic releases their first Blu-ray players somtime in the next few months. No matter how you spin it, the HD DVD fanboys have something to celebrate as they walked away from this first scuffle without so much as a bloody nose.

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Samsung always seems to bring the goods whenever they roll out the goods, be it a new TV, cellphone or cellphone with TV. And by “goods”, we mean hot product models. Here are the top 10, in an order that we felt like putting them in.

10. These models above are notable just for their Korean to non-Korean ratio. It’s not often that Samsung finds off-peninsula models to demo their goods—and for good reason. Look at the way the middle one’s angling that cellphone! The glare just blinded my whole family.

Click through to see the rest.

9. This model clearly has the four cellphone fan-display down pat. The camera captures her friendly smile while showing off Samsung’s new sliders, but what it doesn’t capture is that she has 13 fingers to hold up those phones with.

8. Blu-ray enabled PC. Very nice. No points off for this one, save for our general tepidness towards anything Blu-ray.

7. We couldn’t decide what to focus our attention on when we first saw this one—the huge Samsung screen or the model’s gorgeous gams. After 20 minutes of our eyes darting back and forth, we decided to take a nap. That was a good day.

6. Like a reader noticed when we first posted about Samsung’s digital photo frames, either those photos were taken the same day, or that lady should probably change clothes once in a while. Nice frames though.

5. Pow! Pow! If you liked the legs on #7, you’ll love the double action for Samsung’s Anycall slider phones. Sophisticated, yet kind of slutty at the same time. We heard that young woman in the red is actually the daughter of LG’s CEO. He was furious.

4. This one’s notable for being one of the only male product models Samsung’s used. What? Oh.

3. ARE YOU AS EXCITED ABOUT THIS SAMSUNG PORTABLE DVD PLAYER AS I AM?! HUH!? MY FACE IS CONTORTED BUT THE CAR’S NOT EVEN MOVING!

2. Does the model on the right have a lazy eye, or is her thousand-yard-stare a result of Samsung’s lackluster whatever-that-is that she’s holding. Enthusiasm, kid. That’s the ticket! Try and be more like #3.

1. And our number one Samsung product model shot is of…some PCs or something. The one on the right is a looker, while the one on the left brazenly insults my manhood. Thanks lady, but the wife , my secretary, the kids, some lady at a bus stop, my mechanic, and grandma can handle that find on their own. – Jason Chen

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

You never know what you’ll find when digging through the US Patent files, and it has been discovered that Samsung has filed one of their own in hopes of using the atmosphere as an antenna. Researchers and employees in Korea are devising a method to use the ionosphere — the layer of the atmosphere at around 50 kilometers above the Earth’s surface — as a medium for “long distance communication” without the need for expensive satellites. The ionosphere already plays a role in communications as a “radio reflector” that bounces low frequency radio signals from sea to shining sea. But by launching UHF signals behind a 1GHz carrier signal, scientists hope to alter the behavior of the ionosphere to create an alternating current, which can then be modulated at a particular frequency in order to create an antenna of global proportions. While the precise utility of such an antenna is not yet clear, we’re glad it’s in the works, as this sounds like just the thing to solve those dropped call blues — or not.

[Via Textually]

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Filed under: Storage

After Samsung announced a new solid state drive yesterday, they came back today to clarify a few things. First off, they come in 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors for mounting in standard PC case slots -- as one might've expected. Second, they're meant for high-end PC users who want to improve performance under Windows Vista to take advantage of Vista's "Ready Boost" feature, which we're sure is a part of the flash-based drive enhancements they've made (see: hybrid hard drives) to improve the lumbering behemoth's performance. Oh, and watch out for these drives to start appearing as OEM upgrades in "Vista Ready" PCs before they supposedly show up for the after-market at or under $200. Clear 'nuff?

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Filed under: Storage

Samsung announced a pair of new MMC card advancements today, introducing both higher density and higher performance cards for all you media-happy junkies out there. The company’s touting its NAND-based MMCplus card as the most capacious in the industry, topping out at a hefty 8GB, with 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB rounding out the line. On the other side of things are a pair of decidedly smaller but speedier 1GB and 2GB cards, promising a read-speed of 40 MB/s and a write-speed of 25 MB/s, which should be enough to transfer six MP3 songs per second. Prices don’t seem to have been announced, but the whole lot should be available by the end of the year.

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