GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Most of us can’t fully succumb to our technolust until we’ve seen a finished gadget in use. Here’s the dirty secret, though — none of your perverted fantasies about multiple-touchscreen smartphones can be realized until someone makes a dual-core chip that would know what to do with them. Samsung’s new Orion 1GHz dual-core ARM microprocessor could make those kinky dreams come true.

Samsung announced the new chip in a press release today; it will be pushed out to “select customers in the fourth quarter of 2010″ and go into “mass production in the first half of 2011.”

So what’s the big deal? We’ve had dual-core processors in our laptops for years! Ah, but those processors are way too big and power-hungry for mobile standards. You don’t want to strap your laptop’s battery to your phone, do you? By necessity, mobile chips are all about small size and low power-consumptions. That’s why IBM’s working on mobile chips with super-sleep modes and Intel just went ahead and bought smartphone chipmaker Infineon just to get in the game, as Gadget Lab reported last week.

But wait — haven’t Qualcomm and Texas Instruments already announced their dual-core processors for mobile devices? And didn’t LG even announce today that they’re going to start packing graphics champ NVidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor into smartphones? This can’t just be about mobile multicore processors.

How right you are. This is where we have to unpack those other big numbers attached to the Orion’s specs. The real gem of the Orion is its video processing. Part of this is just the multicore processing; lightweight single-core mobile chips can’t really handle true high-definition (1080p) video. Like the Tegra, the Orion can. What’s more, it’s got an “onboard native triple display controller architecture that compliments multi-tasking operations in a multiple display environment.” Translation: three-way. Smartphones with multiple screens that can display different video to each screen, plus output an entirely different video to a third. These chips are polymorphously perverse.

So that’s the truth about these chips. A smartphone or tablet’s hardware body and capacitative touchscreen are just pretty clothes and suggestive sunglasses. Once you strip those away away, all of the hot, sinewy action is happening underneath.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

How much will Samsung’s Galaxy Tab cost? The guesses range from $300 up, but a listing on Amazon Germany puts the 7-inch tablet at 800, or $1,020. If this actually turns out to be true (and I suspect it will), then the device will almost certainly be a mainstream flop.

Say what you like about the iPad, but don’t argue that it isn’t cheap. The entry-level model is just $500, which is somewhat miraculous for what it packs in, and even more surprising given that Apple likes to make a good chink of change on its hardware sales. Still don’t agree? Take a look at the Dell streak, a tablet with a much smaller screen which runs Google’s Android OS. It costs $550.

As a smaller tablet, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab needs to have a smaller price. Lets be generous for a moment and say that Amazon is listing the 32GB model (the page doesn’t say if it has 16GB or 32GB storage). Next, we’ll take the price of the 32 GB iPad Wi-Fi+3G (the Tab has 3G as standard): $729.00. The Tab is almost $300 more.

I’m sure there will be a market for this little device: it certainly looks good, and Samsung has sold over a million Galaxy S smartphones in just a month and a half. But is it too late? It seems like nobody can yet beat the iPad on price (hell, nobody can beat the iPod Touch on price, and that’s been around for years). Given that the one thing that rivals had over the iPod was price (the iPad was always a little more expensive than other MP3 players) and they still could’t crack Apple’s hold on the market, things don’t look good. And that’s before we even get to the apps.

Samsung Galaxy Tab [Amazon. Thanks, Sascha!]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

This rather familiar-looking tablet is in fact one of the first Android tablets in the wild. The Identity TAB comes from South Korea’s KT and will cost 300,000 Won, or around $250, and is almost identical to the upcoming Galaxy Tab from Samsung.

The TAB runs Android 2.2 Froyo, and the TFT LCD (multitouch) screen measures seven-inches, which seems to be a sweet spot for Android tablets. It runs on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, is packed with 8GB storage and a gyroscope, plus some great additions not found in Apple’s iPad: a 3MP camera (rear-facing), an SD-card slot and a DMB TV Tuner (sweet!).

As with any tablet facing up to the iPad, it will win or lose based on the smoothness and integration of the operating system and hardware (things much more important when you are interacting with on-screen controls directly) and of course an app ecosystem. The Identity TAB does have one other great advantage: It’s in Korea, which means crazy-good internet. The $250 price is for the unit alone. Sign up for a contract and it is free if you pick a $22 per month WiMax contract from SK Telecom, offering an impossible-to-exhaust 50GB of data. One caveat: from the (translated) wording of various descriptions, it is unclear whether WiMax (called WiBro in Korea) is built-in or requires an external unit or dongle.

Despite the embarrassingly derivative design, the TAB certainly looks like a tablet to watch.

KT nation’s first Tablet PC released Android [Today Korea via Akihabara News and Engadget]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Oh, won’t you look at this: A spy video of the mysterious new Samsung Galaxy Tab, the seven-inch Android 2.2 tablet to be announced next week at the IFA show in Berlin. The clip comes courtesy of the folks at the Electronista blog, who spotted a telco employee with what is presumably a testing unit.

As you can see, it looks like Electronista was secretly filming as it tried to extract the info from the unsuspecting worker. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the Tab being described as “different” from the iPad and “awesome.”

The video part doesn’t really show us much, other than just how the Tab fits in the hand. It looks to be comfy enough for the long-fingered to grip in a single paw. I do wonder, though, if this in-between size has a use: it’s too big to fit in a pocket, yet much smaller than the iPad’s book-sized display.

The best part is at the end, when the Tab-toting tester finally realizes that he has said too much. “I can’t talk about it,” he says. Too late. You already did.

Samsung Galaxy Tab seen in the wild [Electronista via ]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Samsung’s latest phone, the Vibrant, has the body of an iPhone and the brains of an Android.

The Vibrant’s industrial design is shockingly similar to the iPhone 3G: The rounded curves at the corners, the candybar shape, the glossy, black finish and the chrome-colored metallic border around the display. The Vibrant even has its volume and ringer buttons in almost the same spot as the iPhone 3G.

But if you are willing to get past the derivative design, the Vibrant has some sweet tech specs. The Vibrant is part of Samsung’s new portfolio of Android devices collectively called ‘Galaxy S.’

The Vibrant has a 4-inch AMOLED screen that’s bright and vivid and the 1-GHz Hummingbird processor makes the device pretty zippy. There’s GPS, Wi-Fi and a 5-megapixel camera. Overall, the phone (weighing 4.16 ounces) feels remarkably light. By comparison, the iPhone 3G weighs around 4.7 ounces.

There’s one disturbing thing about the phone. The device comes packed with apps you probably don’t need: MobiTV, GoGo Inflight internet and Electronic Arts’ The Sims 3 game. Sure, you can always delete these apps if you don’t use them, but why bundle them into the phone instead of giving users the option to download the apps if they want them? We’d hate to see bloatware start to overwhelm brand-new phones with junk the way it does with most new PCs.

The Vibrant runs version 2.1 of the Android operating system. That means access to all the standard Google apps such as maps, YouTube and e-mail. Setup, as with most Android phones, is easy — just enter your Google e-mail address and the device unlocks access to your Google account and to the Android Market.

Samsung’s skin for the Android is clean and easy to use. But the square icons are, again, very similar in their looks to the iPhone 3G’s.

Samsung has created a Social Hub widget for the device that integrates Facebook, Twitter and MySpace feeds into a single window. That has its limitations, though. For instance, it’s easy to reply and retweet messages, but you can’t see @replies or direct messages from Twitter through the widget.

Samsung’s Vibrant will cost $200 (with a two-year contract) on T-Mobile when it comes out July 21. But there’s little to make the phone notable, apart from its striking similarity to the iPhone. Without that, the Vibrant is then just another Android phone, albeit one with a pretty good screen and surprisingly light weight.

Check out the photo of the Samsung Vibrant next to the iPhone 3G below.

Photos: Stefan Armijo/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews