Hasta La Gadget!

Today at its IFA 2012 press conference, Samsung confirmed that the newly announced Galaxy Note II will make use of a new, redesigned S Pen. In addition to boasting an improved 8mm grip, it has a rubber tip. It also recognizes 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is already true of the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. Other than that, Samsung hasn’t shared much in the way of specifics, but if you’d like to see video of the new Note in action, we can at least offer that.

Filed under: Tablets

Samsung Galaxy Note II getting redesigned S Pen with rubber tip, improved grip originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s busy cranking out its fall lineup here in Berlin, and among the new entries is the ATIV Tab, a Windows RT-packing cousin of the Galaxy Note 10.1. The new 10.1-inch slate isn’t quite as aggressive as its Android counterpart and centers on a 1,366 x 768 display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 5MP rear camera paired with a 1.9MP front-facing cam, and ports for micro-HDMI as well as USB. Dimensionally, the tablet is as light and skinny as you’d hope: it weighs 20.1 ounces (570g) and measures a slim 8.9mm thick. The 32GB and 64GB storage options aren’t shockers given the extra space Windows and the bundled copy of Office 2013 Home and Student 2013 will demand, but there’s a treat for long-haul users in the battery — it’s been upgraded from the 7,000maH pack of the Note 10.1 to an ample 8,200mAh unit. Samsung hasn’t handed out launch details, but it’s safe to say that the ATIV Tab won’t arrive any sooner than October 26th.

Check out all of our IFA 2012 coverage at our event hub!

Brad Molen contributed to this post.

Filed under: Tablets, Wireless

Samsung introduces ATIV Tab: a 10.1-inch Windows RT tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Camera might run Android, but in your hand it’s most definitely a point-and-shoot. Still, Samsung has taken advantage of that heft well: you get a huge 21x optical zoom, 16-megapixel camera and a vast 4.8-inch HD screen. We caught up with Samsung ahead of its IFA 2012 “Unpacked” launch event to see how the Galaxy Camera holds up. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.

If you’ve used a recent Samsung Android phone, then the Galaxy Camera’s interface should be familiar. It’s primarily intended for landscape orientation use, though an accelerometer will flip it into portrait mode if you rotate it. Three homescreens with the usual app and widget support, along with support for third-party software, email, browsing and more, are pulled directly from phones; the 35 tool editing suite is a new addition, but is equally straightforward thanks to the expansive touchscreen.

The face-combining tool we’ve seen on BlackBerry 10 – allowing you to pick out faces from multiple frames, and add them into one image to get the best shot of each person – works well, just as we’ve seen before. It’s not clear whether it’s powered by Scalado, as per RIM’s implementation, but we wouldn’t be surprised.

We were able to quickly snap off photos – and indeed you can shoot video and stills simultaneously, though the optical zoom proved more ponderous when clips were filming – and then have the Galaxy Camera automatically identify faces in the frames. Match each person to a contact, and the camera tags each frame with that person for easier recall later. You can search using multiple tags, and so can pull out images that were taken at the same time, with the same people showing, in the same location if you choose.

Sharing uses the normal Android share-to menu, though sized up to make the best use of the display, and so any app you have which supports sharing can be used with the camera. That should help longevity, such as if you find yourself addicted to a social network Samsung didn’t guess to include out of the box. Uploading can be either via WiFi or 3G/HSPA+, though you can’t use the latter connection to make calls. Given Android’s popularity with modded ROMs, though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see that change shortly after the Galaxy Camera’s Q4 2012 launch.

Cameras running Android are still rare, with Polaroid announcing one model at the top of the year but still yet to release it, and Nikon joining the rarified club in recent weeks with the Coolpix S800c. They’ll both need to be good to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Camera, however; its photographic abilities have Samsung’s lineage, and its camera tech significantly improves the usability experience overall. Pricing may end up being the deciding factor, however, so hopefully carriers won’t pull the rug from under the Galaxy Camera before it ever has a chance to shine.

Samsung Galaxy Camera hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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During a visit to Samsung’s headquarters in Korea earlier this year, we had a chance to talk shop with company execs. The electronics maker’s existing mirrorless and point-and-shoot lineups were the primary topic of discussion, but we did catch wind of a Galaxy product possibly to come, from the camera division. A Galaxy camera? That could only mean Android, and a heavy heaping of touch and connectivity. At the time, reps admitted only that they were “considering” such a device, and declined to provide any hint as to design or functionality. And we haven’t heard a further peep, until today. As you may have gathered from recent rumors, Samsung’s Galaxy Note II is not the only product to be Unpacked this afternoon. Sure enough, the anticipated Galaxy Camera is also on order, and we have all the juicy details just past the break.

Continue reading Samsung announces EK-GC100 Galaxy Camera with Android Jelly Bean, massive 4.8-inch display, 21x zoom, WiFi and 4G connectivity (hands-on)

Filed under: Cameras

Samsung announces EK-GC100 Galaxy Camera with Android Jelly Bean, massive 4.8-inch display, 21x zoom, WiFi and 4G connectivity (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sorry Nokia, consider your thunder stolen. It hasn’t yet made an appearance at Samsung’s big IFA press conference inside the Berlin Tempodrom, but Samsung’s first Windows Phone 8 device has just been made official thanks to a post on Microsoft’s Windows Phone Blog.

That device in question is the ATIV (Ah-TEEV, not EYY-tiv) S, a rather handsome new handset that sports a (sadly unspecified) 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing counterpart to boot.

Update (5:02PM ET): Neither Samsung nor Microsoft dug into what kind of processor the ATIV S has under the hood, but Qualcomm confirmed to PC Magazine that it’s an MSM8260A. That’s the same chipset seen in the U.S. variants of the HTC One X and Galaxy S III so the ATIV won’t leave you wanting for horsepower, but it means LTE is definitely off the table.

The spec sheet may not be the most riveting you’ll ever see — Windows Phone has never really required bleeding edge hardware — but the move puts the pressure on Nokia to unveil something tremendous next week.

The ATIV S features a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display swathed in Gorilla Glass, which may make it a bit of a handful (its size puts it right up there in Galaxy S III territory) — but there’s little question that Samsung knows how to make a big device feel smaller than it actually is. The fact that the ATIV S squeezes all that into a brushed aluminum 8.7mm thick chassis (the Galaxy S III is only just a hair thinner at 8.6mm) certainly doesn’t hurt. What really lends the ATIV some star power is that it’s the world’s first Windows Phone 8 device, though it may be a while before the rest of us get to see how well the software complements the hardware.

Users will be able to pick up a 16 or 32GB model at some point in the near future — no one has mentioned availability yet — but they can rest easy knowing that at long last they’ll be able to throw a microSD card into their Windows Phone.