Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Here is what caught my eye this week:

Follow to see my rant on:
• The not so Bold.
• Windows XP or bust.
• Google’s got waaay too much free time.
• Verizon thinks they know a smartphone when they see one.

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This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Here is what caught my eye this week:

Click more to witness the insanity.

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Yup! You read it right. Albeit this is not the first 8 Megapixel phone from Samsung, the news of Samsung’s 8 Megapixel M8800 Bresson aka Pixon struck all mobile phone lovers when it was announced on September 25th, 2008. As a matter of fact, Pixon is relatively different when compared to the first 8 megapixel Samsung i8510 INNOV8.  The Pixon has no keyboard but instead features a 3.2 inch touch screen display with an on-screen keyboard.  The Pixon is not a smartphone, which probably will irritate some people.  Nevertheless, lacking the features of a smartphone, Samsung has definitely found a way to somehow to make up for this by providing rather amazing specs for a non-smartphone.

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Alltel, the owner of the world’s America’s (meaning USA) largest wireless network, announced today they will be offering the nuTsie service on select phones bringing customers their iTunes music wherever they are, just like an iPhone.  nuTsie says they’ve got over 1 million happy users and the Alltel deal gives them direct access to even more.  Alltel will become the first wireless carrier to offer the service to their customers. 

Forget syncing, nuTsie works via low-bandwidth streaming.  No downloading, sideloading or waiting.  Seems like a simple idea.  In addition to offering access to users iTunes music, a clever “Serendipity Slider” allows music recommendations to be be played as well opening up users to new music.  Customers can also share playlists, check out lyrics and view YouTube videos, if the phone supports these features.  Alltel is offering the service for $5 per month or $19 per year.

Find out if this deal is for you, click more…

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I’m too sexy for my phone, too sexy for my phone… Well, that just may be what users of the new un-sexy Samsung Rugby may be singing. But, too sexy for their phone or not, their phone will probably have no problem being able to hold up their end of the relationship.

The recently released Rugby, with its clamshell handset, is the first military-spec phone from AT&T.  It complies with Military Standard MI-SID-810F (dust, shock vibration, rain, humidity and solar radiation proof, as well as the ability to hold its own at altitude and temperature extremes).  It comes equipped with Push-to-talk, an Integrated aGPS, Quad-band UMTS and HSDPA, Bluetooth connectivity, One-way Video Share calling, a 2” display, 1.3 megapixel camera, and 128MB internal memory.

Feedback I’ve found out there by actual users of the phone has been pretty positive so far. 

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Samsung has officially tossed their hat into the netbook market and introduced the NC10. Overall, the NC10 features a pretty standard set of specs, but it does seem that Samsung is trying some creative marketing to make it at least seem a little more appealing.

According to Samsung the NC10 was developed for the “kinetic elite” and was “expertly crafted so you can achieve even more on the move – and still look good!” They go on to further mention just how durable the NC10 will be due to the “ultra durable Protect-o-Edge” casing that it is made from. It has even had the “normal-size” keyboard sprinkled with “incredibly small, nano-sized silver ion powder” in an effort to keep any bacteria from living and breeding. 

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It seems Samsung has decided to try and cash in on the current netbook craze, of course it seems they have a fairly standard offering and sadly it does not seem to be offering anything original other than the Samsung branding. While we are still waiting a final announcement on the specs, it was mentioned that it will feature an 8.9-inch display and Intel processor. Based on that we can assume that it will be the current favorite; a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. Otherwise from the images we can see that it will have three USB ports, Ethernet, VGA and a built-in webcam. One item that seems to be missing is the built-in card reader. Still unannounced is any pricing. The netbook is expected to be available sometime this October although it looks to be (at least initially) heading to the Korean market only .

Read [AVING] Via [jkOnTheRun]

Recently, Samsung announced two new MP3 players, the YP-Q1, which is pictured above, and the YP-U4. The interesting thing about the Q1 is that it is the first MP3 player by Samsung that sports their DNSe 3 audio technology, which restores what is lost when songs are compressed.

In addition, it comes with a light-up D-Pad, 2.4-inch LCD screen, FM tuner, photo display and video playback. No word on exact formats for video and photo, however it is set to come in a few different models which include 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of flash memory. Next, we have the YP-U4, which is an upgraded model of the Samsung U3. It comes in a stick-like shape, a full directional pad to navigate within the device and a monochrome OLED screen. Furthermore, it comes with a battery life of up to 16 hours.

The Samsung YP-Q1 has been slated for an October release, and it would sell in a few different colors. The YP-U4 is already retailing it select areas.

Via [Electronista]

Samsung has taken a 120GB 1.8-inch hard drive and recently put it into a shiny black, credit card sized enclosure. Seemingly without an official name, the new drives feature a shiny black exterior with a hard drive logo and a simple statement of “The Storage World In Hand.”

All things considered 120GB is quite a lot of storage for a drive enclosure of that size, and certainly beats using a regular USB flash drive in terms of capacity. The drive does offer some nice perks in that its a 4200rpm drive which only requires 1.4W of power, which means it will not require anything other than a spare USB port for power.

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Samsung has announced its feature rich Blu-ray player, the BD-P2500. Boasting interactive features such BD Live and Bonus View, this Blu-ray player gives out a full HD audio-visual experience through its Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processing and 7.1-Channel analog audio outputs. Even better is the fact that the BD-P2500 does not only play Blu-ray discs but also does upscaling of standard DVD’s in full HD 1080p quality.

A quick rundown of the BD-P2500’s features would give us a built-in wired Ethernet connection, 1GB internal flash memory, USB port, HDMI 1.3 output with xvTCC Deep Color support, and 24fps film mode. The player also tops in the sound department since it can decode high-resolution digital multichannel audio soundtracks as well as outputs Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS either as an uncompressed PCM signal or through 7.1 analog outputs. In addition, users can receive feature updates and upgrades through its embedded Ethernet connection, USB port as well as a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc.

The Samsung BD-P2500 will be available sometime in October and carries and retail price of $499.99.

Read [Samsung] Via [Akihabara News]