Month: February 2011

LG Optimus 3D

Posted by – February 14, 2011

The product manager on LG Optimus 3D presents what may be the most powerful smart phone ever shown thus far. It uses the Texas Instruments OMAP4 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core processor, that is fast enough to record 720p 3D video, it includes even the new LG 4.3″ glasses free 3D screen, where the 3D effect can be turned on or off.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Posted by – February 14, 2011

Awesome. It uses Samsung’s new Exynos Orion ARM Cortex-A9 processor, Multimedia High-definition Link technology, the new 4.3 Samsung Super AMOLED Plus screen with better anti-reflection, better colors, better clarity and more, all of this in a thinner and lighter form factor. To be available around April or so. But Samsung is probably not going to make this cheaper.

Samsung Galaxy Ace

Posted by – February 14, 2011

The form factor on this Android phone is about the same as an iPhone. It has a 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touch screen and a Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 processor. But this one is designed to be sold around $200 unlocked or on pre-paid plans. This Android Smartphone is cheap.

Live from the Samsung MWC event!

Posted by – February 14, 2011

Well this is not exactly live, but you get the point. Samsung organized a gigantic event in something that looks like a stadium, huge show, funky music, awesome devices.

Samsung Galaxy Mini

Posted by – February 14, 2011

The cheapest new Samsung Galaxy phone. It uses the Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 processor.

Interactive Pico Projectors presented by Texas Instruments

Posted by – February 14, 2011

This area I think could be the most interesting future development with the Pico projectors, it could turn your Smartphone into a 20″ Tablet, by projecting an interactive wall onto any table combined with some kind of gesture recognition (that it detects precisely where you touch the table). No prototypes are shown yet, I think Texas Instruments and their partners should make it a priority to demonstrate that this can be made to work to make this into a leading differentiating hardware feature of future smart phones.

Netflix on OMAP4

Posted by – February 14, 2011

Texas Instruments implements some security features in the new OMAP4 processor which allows for access to DRM sites like Netflix on Android.

Opera Mini on the iPad

Posted by – February 14, 2011

Opera is adapting their web browser for tablets, here is their demonstration of Opera Mini running on the iPad. Will Apple allow this in the Apple App Store? To be seen.

Samsung Galaxy S2, Tab2 details, infos, release dates

Posted by – February 13, 2011

I’ll post my videos once I get the bandwidth tomorrow. Here are some infos I grabbed from the awesome Samsung event, I don’t know if those are common knowledge or if those pieces of infos are interesting:

- Samsung Galaxy 10.1 is Nvidia Tegra2 based, to be released next month, design is pretty awesome (except a bit heavy, no HDMI, no kick-stand), Honeycomb is freaking awesome, the first real tablet OS ever made. (iPad OS is not a real tablet OS). Wow Google made awesome work.

- Samsung Galaxy S2 has a MHL (Multimedia High-definition Link) connector, which basically allows the Micro-USB to do much more than just be a Micro-USB connector, it can for example output 1080p with a Micro-USB to HDMI cable, it can do USB host stuff such as USB keyboards, which basically means, if Samsung wants, they can make it do most of the things the Motorola Atrix 4G does. My understanding is Samsung’s Exynos is better than Nvidia Tegra2, has better/faster memory bandwidth, better graphics in ARM Mali-400 (did they say it does 320 Million triangles/polygons per second?). The units on display were hot, but that’s probably just cause of the hot lights and many people fondling them while launching videos and 3D stuff. It may also be I guess because the Exynos are pre-production and being over-clocked for good performance in these pre-production prototypes, but they told me that was not the case. The Linux kernel in S2 Gingerbread supports Dual-core, but I think Samsung and Google have plenty of software optimizations still to do to fully utilize the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 power. This might be what happens once 2.4 comes out with all the 3.0 tablet features and hardware acceleration but adapted for smartphones.

- I think Samsung should turn the S2 into an Atrix 4G-like all-in-one chameleon of a device, basically just provide the right types of accessories for it, hopefully they’d price those more reasonably than Motorola. Also, Samsung says the MHL standard is going to be a standard for the industry, first introduced with S2, so perhaps any third party accessory makers could make alternative and compatible Laptop Docks, TV Docks, Desktop Docks, Keyboard Attachments and more interesting stuff.

- Samsung Galaxy Family, they are releasing a whole range of cheap Android phones. The Samsung Galaxy Mini is the cheapest of the bunch. Prices are confidential, up to carriers or/and distributors to decide, but I expect the Mini to be available below $150, perhaps towards $100, for unlocked or/and prepaid plans. Those are extremely great capacitive smartphones, 3.something inch screens (some weird Samsung LCD sizes), but most are QVGA, and the middle range Samsung Galaxy Ace goes to 3.5″ HVGA.

You can probably find much more real infos on other blogs, but here are some of the things I heard. Overall, the S2 is totally awesome, just beautiful slim nice phone, Tab2 is probably the best Tegra2 tablet I’ve seen. To be seen and retested what Acer and LG does with that.

Look for tons of my videos starting tomorrow. I’m at Mobile World Congress, no sim card in sight, only roaming. I’ll get a Yoigo SIM card tomorrow.

Samsung Galaxy S2, Tab2, new images

Posted by – February 13, 2011

Look for my videos on these as early as later today. My wild guess is Samsung may need their new Super AMOLED factory that may not be ready before June, before they mass release the new Galaxy S2 with the new Samsung Orion processor that starts mass manufacturing next month. Samsung has a press conference on these at 6PM Barcelona time, check back for a lot more.

Source: samsunghub.com