Archive for: Samsung
That brand spankin’ new Samsung Galaxy Note you’re looking to pick up might not hold its crown of ultimate 5.3″ phablet for too much longer if a rumor from MobileCowboys is accurate. Said outfit is reporting that Samsung will announce a new Galaxy Note, dubbed the Galaxy Note S, at Mobile World Congress this month. No specs or future release date our given. The only “known” piece of information is that it will supposedly ship with android 4.x.
We’re going to call BS on this one. While the Android world does move very fast, we just don’t see Samsung announcing/releasing a Galaxy Note successor before the original has even had a chance to really ship yet. On top of that, we can’t believe that Samsung would drop a bajillion dollars on a short Super Bowl ad to promote the current Galaxy Note if a faster and more powerful one is literally right around the corner.
Why hello there, Galaxy S II+. The big difference (in case you were wondering) between the gem above and your typical GSII currently on the market — Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and the removal of physical buttons in favor of ICS-loving capacitive ones. Internal specs are likely to remain nearly identical to the Galaxy SII, though, we also wouldn’t be surprised to see Samsung bump the MHz up a couple hundred and/or pop a qHD display into the 4.3-incher’s frame to replace the aging 480 x 800 display.
We’re kind of on the fence. While it’s nice for Samsung to get an ICS device out there, especially considering ICS has been available now since November, we’d much rather see them stop with these almost pointless stop-gap releases. Save your money and stop wasting our time; give us unique, new phones spread across slightly longer refresh intervals.
Nonetheless, if the Galaxy S II+ happened to cross paths with us, we’d be inclined to pick it up. Considering the Galaxy S III won’t be debuting at MWC, our money is on this as a near-term solution to anxious upgraders looking for something to drop a few bills on.
The upcoming 6-8 weeks are going to be busy for U.S. Cellular and friends as the company is prepping their official LTE network launch as well as two new LTE devices, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy S Aviator. Both devices will feature LTE support to make use of the new super speedy network, which according to U.S. Cellular, will cover a full 25% of their network from day 1.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will ship with Android 3.2, a 10.1″ WXGA display and the rest of the usual specs from Samsung’s 10″ tablets. The Aviator S will (sadly) ship with Android 2.3.6, a 4.3″ WVGA Super AMOLED display, 8-megapixel/VGA (rear/front) facing cameras, and again, standard hardware for a high-end Android device filling out the rest of the specs.
But the real meat of the store is U.S. Cellular’s new LTE network. In partnership with King Street Wireless, the duo will flip the switch in a number of cities in “select cities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma”. More specifically, some of the higher profile markets include: Milwaukee, Madison and Racine, Wisconsin; Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa; Portland and Bangor, Maine; and Greenville, North Carolina.
Look for the LTE airwaves to go live beginning in March with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 launching around the same time. The Galaxy S Aviator smartphone will come a month later in April.
What do you say, U.S. Cellular customers? Ready for some LTE action?
When we gazed upon the slew of gigantor 50″+ OLED tvs at CES, we instantly found ourselves awash in emotion. The most obvious and strongest one was awe. Beautiful doesn’t even begin to describe them. But at the same time, we were also left with a feeling of sadness for even taking scale into account, there was no way we’d be able to afford one of the fancy new sets for at least a couple of years. Reminding us of this fact was Sony’s old 11″ OLED “TV” that they’ve had for a couple years now which sold for a staggering $2,500.
Thankfully we won’t have to weep at night. A “discussion” given by Samsung after CES said that their upcoming 55″ Super OLED TV, the KN55ES9600, should cost “well under” the rumored $8,000 price tag that was floated around at CES. According to Samsung, the aforementioned barely there TV should sell at prices “slightly” higher than current high-end LED TVs. For comparisons sake, such TVs are in the $3,000-$4,000 range (though can obviously go higher based on brand). $3-$4k is still a large chunk of change, though it is 50% less than the chunk we thought we’d have to part with.
TV junkies and pixel lovers are no doubt letting out a huge sigh of relief. No one likes to go broke gobbling up the latest tech but it’s something we as aficionados of technology must do.
The wait for Samsung Galaxy S II and Note owners will soon be over. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is officially coming to your devices by end of Q1, according to a post on Samsung Norway’s official Facebook Fan Page. If our luck stateside is as good as the Norwegians, we too can look forward to ICS blessing the newly launched Note and “legacy” hardware such as the Galaxy S II in the not too distant future.
The Galaxy Nexus officially ushered in a new era for Android. Some would say, and rightfully so, that Android 4.0 is “what Android 1.0 should have been”. That statement has been echoed at least a couple of times now with the major 2.x and 3.x releases, signaling that despite constant updates and attention, Google’s love child OS still had a ways to go. But Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is more feature complete, polished, and overall more cohesive than anything else Google has ever put out under the Android brand name.
Add to that the Galaxy Nexus hardware — it isn’t the highest end product on the market. But what it does have is a tight connection between hardware and software as well as an open channel to Google for future, unhindered updates. To the biggest Android enthusiasts, that is the best feature.
You could consider myself a late bloomer when it comes to the Galaxy Nexus. A series of unfortunate events and one massive tech trade show got in the way. But it’s here. I’m ready. Let’s get to it.
The Android tablet market is a crowded, dirty affair. If you ask us, it’s kind of like an underground fight club. Really. Lawsuits fly like punches left and right, with each side caring little for the other. They all, of course, have the ultimate goal in sight — your hard earned cash. That said, we’re not sure ZTE’s new V66 Android tablet has what it takes. The hardware is certainly up there with the other king pins of the Android tablet world (dual-core processor, 1280 x 800 resolution, 1 GB of RAM), but the Android 3.x Honeycomb is sorely lacking.
What could possibly benefit the V66, however, is the fact that it bares a striking resemblance to some of Sammy’s recent Galaxy Tabs. A well placed lawsuit and out of court settlement could be just the ticket to get from obscurity to a customer’s living room.
The so called “theif” getting thieved.
Image Source: LaptopMag
The current race in the smartphone world is two-sided. On one side of the coin you have handset manufacturers pushing the envelope in regards to screen size; just how big can they build a phone? On that same note, at which point does a “phone” transition to “tablet”. On the flip side, manufacturers are also hellbent on creating the thinnest phone possible and throwing out all common sense and functionality out the window. Finally, add in the plethora of battery sucking features such as high-res displays, LTE compatibility, and super high megapixel cameras and the state of smartphones has become a sad affair of locker room size comparisons.
I stumbled upon this article over at LaptopMag today and found myself pretty much disgusted. Handset manufacturers are not catering to customers in the slightest, and in fact, I’d argue they’re doing us a disservice. An average of 3-5 hours of battery life with moderate to somewhat heavy use is atrocious and inexcusable. The worst offender (as we’re discovering first hand) is the Galaxy Nexus. The battery life is seriously border line the worst we’ve even had on any device.
But as the Droid RAZR MAXX shows, there is hope. Motorola finally woke up and realized the sad state of the smartphone world, more specifically, the Android smartphone world. Let’s be honest with ourselves. Apple and Microsoft’s group of WP7 partners have been pumping out phones with good to awesome battery life. The answer, as Motorola has finally discovered, was there all along — slap a gigantic battery in a phone to combat the battery sucking features. Actual component size is constantly shrinking yet the battery size of most high-end devices has remained the same.
Why all Android manufacturers can’t put their weapons down and start some actual innovation in regards to smartphone runtime themselves (cross suing each other off the list too) is beyond me. Here’s to hoping Motorola has had their fill of locker room-esque boasting and manages to bring LG, Samsung, HTC, and everyone else with them. If they’ve managed to make Windows Phone 7 quite the battery sipper that it is — And Apple has managed to make iOS quite efficient even with dual-core processors as well — there’s no reason they can’t do the same with Android.
While the Samsung Galaxy Ace is certainly a new phone, it is definitely trying not to be the most powerful smartphone on the market. Not every smartphone owner wants to (or can afford) a high-end piece of technology, and so the Ace is at the rescue as a dependable phone that still mostly copes with most software thrown at all smartphones these days.
We take a look at this phone that fits in the middle of the stack of intelligent devices out there, which you can read right after the break.
