Samsung unveils its iPhone-killer
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Samsung's iPhone killer initially looks like Apple's much-touted device but has a QWERTY keyboard and support for 3G, according to the Korean vendor.
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(InfoWorld) - So much for Apple Inc. raising the bar in the mobile phone industry. Since Apple announced it would soon start selling a combined music player and mobile device called the iPhone, industry experts have predicted that competing cell phone makers would rise to the challenge and start producing equally exciting phones. They may yet do that, but so far they haven't. I took a quick stroll around the show floor of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona checking out the music phones from some of the biggest handset makers out there to see if anything might compare to the hype aroundÂ expectations for the iPhone. Apple is known for great hardware designs and simple, intuitive user interfaces. While I saw a dizzying array of form factors and a multitude of user interface styles, I was unimpressed with the hardware I saw and downright confounded by the complexity of all the user interfaces. My examinations were quick -- the show floor is incredibly crowded and hot, so sometimes it took some sharp elbows to even get to touch a phone. I took a brief look at the overall form factor of the phones and then did some navigating around the music player. I started out at the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB booth, perhaps because I know the company has been pushing its Walkman handsets. The W880 is a really nice looking phone. It's incredibly thin and has unusual raised keys that work nicely. Sony Ericsson gets high marks for the hardware form factor on this one, but the software user interface was a different story. I never did manage to find the music player from the home screen. Ultimately, I just moved along to another phone in the display area that was already running the music player. I had a similar navigation problem on Nokia Corp.'s 5200 music phone. From the home screen, I clicked on an icon with a music note in it, which seemed a logical place to launch the music player. But that took me to a music-related game. I scrolled and scrolled through a horizontal bar of icons but didn't find a music player there. Then I noticed that floating in the middle of the screen were two long bars: one for the music player and one for the calendar. That threw me -- of all phone functions, why were the music player and calendar the only two to be presented that way? At least Nokia had loaded the demonstration phones with music. Some of the other handsets I tried out, such as the Sony Ericsson one, had just one song on them. That makes it difficult to get a feel for navigating around the music player. I don't love the form factor of the 5200 but I think some people might. It's sporty, in white and bright red, and a shape reminiscent of Motorola Inc.'s PEBL phones. It slides open. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s SG HF300 "Ultramusic" was next up. I couldn't help but be struck by the cool design. One side of the phone is nearly all screen; the flip side has a keypad for dialing the phone. I never managed to figure out how to use the control panel on the music player side of the phone. It looks like the iPod's but square. I don't have an iPod so maybe iPod users can easily figure it out. If you're not an iPod user -- and you may not be if you're in the market for a music phone -- the SG HF300 might require a steep learning curve. Motorola was next in line. I'm probably least impressed with the Z8 than any of the others. I think the design is clunky and looks and feels like a slider phone from a couple of years ago. For the innovator of the thin phone, Motorola should have done better with the Z8's size. I found it difficult to figure out which buttons corresponded with the words at the bottom of the screen so even hitting "back" proved difficult initially. Then, when looking for the music player application, I suddenly found an error message on the screen and the phone froze. Not a great sign. My final stop was Neonode AB, a Swedish company that has been touting its music phone, particularly its touch screen. The device is in a category of its own and is very un-phone like. About the size of a business card, though not as thin, its touch screen definitely requires training to use. I would have never been able to figure it out without instruction. Users sweep up along the home screen within three columns. The first opens a navigation page with icons for functions such as the music player, calendar and calculator. The middle column opens a touch pad for dialing calls. And the final column opens a tools menu. Sweeping left along the screen goes back a page and sweeping right opens a function that is highlighted. When presented with a list such as albums, you touch the item to highlight it and then touch the middle of the screen to open. Sound confusing? It was. Still, I'm not panning it. It may require a bit of direction and practice but I think it'd be pretty easy to get the hang of how it works. While the small size was attractive, it also meant that it felt a bit designed for a child. Most adults have fingertips that are bigger than the icons on the screen. Overall, I was largely underwhelmed with my experiences. But there's time -- Apple only just announced the iPhone and its competitors haven't really had time to respond. Also, my search was by no means exhaustive. For example, I didn't make it to LG Electronics Inc., which recently unveiled a phone, the KE850, that is being compared to the iPhone. Even at the booths I visited, I chose to look at the phone that appeared to me to be the most focused on music but that may not be the one the manufacturer would direct me to and other models may compare more directly with the iPhone. And finally, I'm the first to admit my exercise was a bit silly given that I've never even seen an iPhone. But such is the power of the Apple marketing machine.
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The newest in a stream of upcoming slim and powerful cell phones
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Samsung unveils a new service and a player with slide-out speakers--in a crowded market for both.
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics has developed the world's first mobile phone equipped with a five-megapixel camera.
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Samsung Electronics, largest producer of color monitors, color TV sets, memory chips, and LCD displays, has announced the &quot;first-ever mobile phone with an internal hard drive&quot; (Samsung&#39;s slogan for this phone) on Tuesday.
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LG Electronics Inc.&#39;s battle to beat the iPhone is far from over. The South Korean electronics company has unveiled its second iPhone-like handset and this one packs several important features the iPhone doesn&#39;t: 3G and high-speed cellular data networking.
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âThe phone is so sleek and thin,â reports David Pogue (New York Times) in his review of iPhone, that âit makes Treos and Blackberrys look obese.â And the software transcends. âItâs fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate.â If you need âto answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up.â As for email, itâs âfantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.â And âthe Web browser,â he points out, âis the real dazzler.â No âstripped down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip â much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.â In short, Pogue calls the iPhone, âthe most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years.â
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âAfter all the ink thatâs been spilled describing, previewing and hyping the Apple iPhone, does it deserve the attention? Iâd have to say yes,â reports Ryan Kim (San Francisco Chronicle). âThe lure of the iPhone is that it makes you want to use it. Itâs actually fun. Do we say that about any phones? Hardly. Itâs not really the physical design, which is a marvel of simplicity. Itâs what happens when you pick it up and use it. There is nothing intimidating about it. Rather, itâs inviting.â âThe cell phone, the most personal of technology devices,â Kim concludes, âhas just gotten a whole lot more personal.â
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Samsung unveiled a new mobile chipset with up to 4GB of storage capacity, potentially eliminating the need for add-on memory cards.
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(InfoWorld) - Telephones with touchscreen displays that occupy most of their front face are starting to looking like the next big thing in the cellphone market. On Thursday Samsung Electronics became the third company in almost as many weeks to show a handset with such a design. In unveiling the F700, Samsung joins Apple, whichÂ started the ball rolling with its iPhoneÂ in early January, and LG Electronics, whichÂ announced its K850 "Prada" handsetÂ in the second half of the same month. Among the three handsets the F700 is the first that is compatible with 3G (third generation) WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) in addition to conventional GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). It also works with the companion HSDPA and EDGE data transmission systems so, on 3G networks, it can receive data at up to 7.2Mbps. It also scores points over the other two handsets by having a higher quality camera -- 5 megapixel versus 2 megapixel on the iPhone and K850 phones -- and support for a wider variety of multimedia file formats. On the video side it can play MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and Real Video. For audio, it supports MP3, AACplus, eAACplus and Real audio formats, Samsung said in a statement. But it falls down in a couple of areas when compared to the other phones. Among the three it has the smallest display: 2.8 inches against 3 inches on the K850 and 3.5 inches on the Apple handset. Screen resolution is 240 pixels by 440 pixels, which puts it lower than the iPhone, but higher than the K850. Other features include a QWERTY keyboard on the lower-half of the phone that slides out from behind the display when needed. Some specifications, like the battery life and standby time, are yet to be determined, said Stephanie Wong, a spokeswoman for the company in Seoul. The F700, which will be on show at next week's 3GSM expo in Spain, will be the fourth member of Samsung's "Ultra" family of phones. Samsung hasn't decided when or where the phone will be launched nor at what price, said Wong.
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Samsung Electronics will present the latest model in its popular&#160;Ultra edition range of cell phones&#160;at the Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona next week.The phone, dubbed &quot;Soul,&quot; is a slider-type handset that with an eye-catching touch panel under the display. The panel displays navigation icons that change according to the current application being run on the handset. For example, in camera mode icons such as zoom and brightness appear while music player functions appear in music mode.The quad-band GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) handset supports data downloads of up to 7.2Mbps&#160;over HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks and also has Bluetooth 2.0 wireless networking.Other features include a 5-megapixel camera with face detection and image stabilizer, FM radio with RDS (Radio Data System) and a music system based on technology from Bang &amp; Olufsen.The phone will be available worldwide and hit Europe in April.Samsung&#39;s Ultra line has proved a hit with style-conscious consumers. All phones in the range emphasize thinness and the new Soul handset is no different at 12.9 millimeters thick. But it&#39;s nowhere near as slim as the Ultra 5.9 handset that Samsung unveiled this time last year in Barcelona. The candy bar phone, as the name suggests, is just 5.9 millimeters thick.
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It's a PDA too, maker boasts Samsung has announced a 18.9cm thick slider handset that not only packs in phone and PDA functionality, but also manages to squeeze in Wi-Fi, digital TV reception and 5.1-channel audio.â¦
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A five-megapixel camera. A personal GPS navigator. Storage for 8,000 songs. Shake control of music tracks. These are some of the eye- and ear-catching features on six new phones and three new Bluetooth watches released this week by Sony Ericsson -- about two weeks before the release of the little attention-grabber known as the iPhone.
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Samsung's Q1 Ultra mobile PC shows that Samsung listened to criticism. But this second-generation device still doesn't live up to its potential.
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It's a PDA too, maker boasts Samsung has announced a 1.9cm thick slider handset that not only packs in phone and PDA functionality, but also manages to squeeze in Wi-Fi, digital TV reception and 5.1-channel audio.â¦
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Nokia is making moves on Apple in more ways than one. While its latest rendition of the N95 mobile device debuted as a so-called iPhone killer, its Ovi Internet services are launching as a formidable iTunes competitor.