Hasta La Gadget!

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Samsung’s gone official with the Galaxy S 4 Active — once again, before the company’s incoming UK launch event. With IP67 water and dust protection — it’ll survive three feet of water for up to 30 minutes — as well as a 5-inch (TFT LCD) 1080p display (443 ppi), there’s an unspecified 1.9GHz quad-core processor to do the heavy lifting. Alongside LTE radios and Android 4.2.2, the GS4 Active packs an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, while the front-facer will take up to two-megapixel stillw.

Now, to match those outdoor protective credentials, there’s also a water-resistant headphone socket, Samsung’s ‘glove touch’ screen tech (meaning you’ll be able to handle it with gloves) and a special ‘aqua mode’ setting for the camera to improve all those underwater shots you’re bound to take with a submersible smartphone. (In fact, for meteorologists, there’s even an outdoors-y barometer built in too.) The phone launches in the US (most likely on AT&T) and Europe this summer, in Urban Grey, Dive Blue and Orange Flare color options. We’re still waiting on pricing, but Samsung promises that we’ll be able to test it in the flesh at the aforementioned London event later this month.

Mat Smith contributed to this report.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung Tomorrow

Samsung is moving quickly to diversify its phone line, with variants of the S4 popping out of the woodwork left and right, including the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which features a rumored 10x optical zoom on its rear camera. Today the Galaxy S4 Active, a ruggedized, smaller version of the flagship S4 has hit the Bluetooth Special Interest Group for certification, which means it could be coming along shortly, too.

The S4 Active is supposedly a water- and dust-resistant phone designed for use with an active lifestyle, or in outdoor conditions where generally phones don’t fare very well. The S4 Active would compete head-to-head with Sony’s latest lineup of phones, including the Xperia ZR announced today, which is a smaller version of the Xperia Z with slightly less impressive specs. It’s submersible in water for up to 1.5 meters, however, which pits it against the Active’s rumored feature set.

Both the Active and the Zoom S4 variants remind me of how companies are diversifying in another crowded, near saturated market: point-and-shoot cameras. Manufacturers regularly highlight the long zoom and rugged versions of their devices, as these are areas where consumers feel they need more than what’s available to them on the smartphone devices they carry around every day.

Manufacturers like Sony and Samsung moving in this direction with their devices marks an attempt to broaden their lineup’s appeal vs. other similar competitors, but also encroaches on the territory of single-purpose devices like the camera. And the market is likely to get more crowded, not less, as Google has been teasing devices that can withstand harsh environmental forces coming from its Motorola acquisition, through executive statements.

I said previously that Samsung is essentially preparing a phone for every feature to compete with any unique advantage its rivals may try, and the S4 Active is definitely that. But these variant devices also have the potential to act as advance market research for tech that can be adopted back into a flagship device: if any is particularly successful, it provides a roadmap for Samsung about what will draw customers to the S5 or beyond.

The S4 Active getting its Bluetooth certification means it’s likely to get a consumer reveal before too long, so we should see exactly how far Samsung has taken the rugged phone concept soon.