Hasta La Gadget!

The newly-announced Samsung NX300 is going to be their flagship compact digital camera for 2013, offering interchangeable lenses. The NX300 is quite compact, and comes with an 20.3 MP APS-C CMOS sensor.

Having a bright and sharp AMOLED touch screen on a phone is pretty cool. Having one on a camera is just that much better, especially when the screen can tilt up or down, allowing you to properly use it as a viewfinder from your chest or any angle.

It can shoot photos in with a broad ISO range of 100-25600. With the available f1.8 45mm 2D/3D lens, it should also be good for low-light photography. In addition to still images, it can capture 1080p video at 60fps, or at 30fps in 3D.

The 3.31-inch WVGA AMOLED touch screen serves as a viewfinder and offers lots of controls. There are plenty of physical buttons as well, which is good in my opinion. The camera can also shoot in 3D mode and has Wi-Fi, so it can automatically upload photos. The NX300 can be charged via a microUSB port, so you won’t need any special charging cable for it.

The camera will retail for $749.99(USD) when it’s released this March. It ships with a 20-50mm f3.5-f5.6 lens. The f1.8 45mm lens costs $599.99 extra, though.

[via Ubergizmo]

It’s time to put your dreams of owning Audi’s R8 e-tron to bed — the German automaker won’t be shipping the electric car to dealerships, according to a Wired source. The record setting vehicle’s sales plans were apparently axed due to driving range concerns and a new focus on plug-in hybrid vehicles. We followed up with a contact of our own, who confirmed that the R8 would be produced only in small numbers, and only for internal use, at that. The R8 may be dead, but its core achievements should appear in future vehicles, we’re told — including its lightweight construction, AMOLED rear-view mirror and battery management system.

Filed under: Transportation

Audi R8 e-tron won’t see public sale, will be used for internal evaluation only originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re a fan of the ultra-gigantic and super-high-definition television environment that exists amongst the super-rich, then you’ll be glad to know that more 4G resolution televisions are on the way! While shipments of 4K LCD-TVs across the planet are only up to 4,000 units throughout 2012, they’ll ramp up to 2.1 million units in 2017 – that accounting for less than 1 percent of all LCD shipments in both cases. All of this information and analysis comes from IHS iSuppli (now just IHS after iSuppli joined the team fully) and leads into the most important point here: the 4k television may only be a passing fad.

A 4K television is one that has approximately 4,000 pixel resolution horizontally. A common panel being used right now is 60-inches and works with 3,840 by 2,160 resolution. As IHS notes, this size panel is fabulous if you’ve got video that makes use of it – but not a whole lot of media out there today is capable of working at such a resolution. With only “about 1.5 percent of the total television shipments of 2012″ accounting for any television at 60-inches or larger, there’s simply not a demand to allow such video to exist.

“Furthermore, for most people, the 1,080p resolution is good enough. Because of these factors, combined with the massive price tags, the market for 4K sets during the next few years will be limited to very wealthy consumers or to commercial uses.” – IHS

Furthermore, it would appear that the next big wave for giant televisions will be AMOLED – or again, so IHS analyzes – and the 4K television may just be a placeholder for companies until AMOLED becomes the technology everyone wants.

“Japanese brands are offering 4K product because they need to have a competitive alternative to the AMOLED TVs being sold by their rivals in South Korea, Samsung and LG Electronics. Meanwhile, the South Korean companies are having difficulties producing AMOLED panels, saying they will need two more years to achieve competitive volume and pricing. Therefore, the Korean brands are offering 4K sets as a transitional step until their AMOLED televisions are more widely available.” – IHS

So keep your chin up, giant television lovers, you’ve got several years left before the next tech revolution occurs – buy a 4K television now! How else are you going to watch all that media that doesn’t get that sharp anyway?

[via IHS]

IHS says 4K TVs are “transitional products” until AMOLED is widespread is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

LG has launched a pre-reveal attack on Samsung’s favorite phone and tablet technology, AMOLED, hammering home the idea that its Optimus G display will be thinner, brighter, and more power-efficient. Announced last month, the Optimus G uses a new True HD IPS+ screen based on LCD not OLED technologies, and LG is keen to make clear why that’s a specific advantage over Samsung’s current Android flagship smartphone.

LG is using a suspiciously Galaxy S III-shaped wireframe to illustrate its AMOLED opposition, and though there’s no branding to confirm the Samsung slap, if Apple can patent rectangles with rounded corners then we can probably safely assume that it’s the 20m-selling smartphone the Optimus G is being compared to. Even if that’s too great a leap, the fact that Samsung is pushing the market in AMOLED technologies makes it the obvious opposition.

According to LG, the 320ppi True IPS+ panel gives 1.6x clearer images than AMOLED – great for reading text on webpages and in ebooks – while its greater power efficiency when showing white pages (LG namechecks the backgrounds on websites as a good example) is another advantage over the rival tech. Overall thickness is 27-percent down on previous panels.

Slim screens aren’t the only thing LG is relying on to differentiate the Optimus G, though. The company apparently spent 15 months developing and patenting the “Crystal Reflection” process which decorates the back of the smartphone, with a polarized 3D pattern sparkling and glistening in the light.

Whether that will be enough to convince would-be owners to give LG a try despite its less-than-impressive record in delivering Android updates remains to be seen. The LG Optimus G is expected to be officially shown off at the end of September.

LG brings screen smackdown to Samsung over Optimus G is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

At IFA 2012 we’ve gotten our first glimpse of the next phablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note II – now it’s time to compare to the original from one year ago to see what’s been improved. First you’ll notice that the casing for the device has taken on a whole lot more “Galaxy S III” styling, just as the original Note did with the Galaxy S II. The back and front are more than likely going to feature different color combinations even beyond the blue and white we’ve seen thus far.

With this new Galaxy Note II you’ll be working with a display that’s 5.5-inches rather than 5.3-inches but the amount of pixels has gone down (from 1,280 x 800 pixels (285ppi) down to 1,280 x 720 pixels (267ppi)). That’s perfectly OK though since the display technology has changed as well – you’ll be working with HD Super AMOLED rather than Super AMOLED Plus. The chassis have obviously changed also, now 5.95 x 3.16 x 0.37 inches (151.1 x 80.5 x 9.4mm) rather than the slightly fatter and shorter 5.78 x 3.27 x 0.38 inches (146.9 x 83 x 9.7 mm) of the Note 1.

This new iteration of the Galaxy Note has a microSD card slot that can carry up to a 64GB card while the original only had the ability to work with 32GB. The new version also has three device iterations based on internal memory: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. The rear-facing camera stays the same quality as far as numbers go with 8 megapixels and the ability to capture 1080p video, but the front-facing camera has been changed from 2 megapixels down to 1.9 megapixels.

For a bit more explanation on why some of these odd changes were made, have a peek at our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 hands-on post.

Above: Galaxy S III vs Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Note II

The new Galaxy Note II has NFC in all variations from start to finish, and you’ll be working with Bluetooth 4.0 rather than 3.0 which the old model came packed with. The Galaxy Note II comes with 2GB of RAM rather than 1, and its Exynos processor is a 1.6GHz quad-core SoC rather than dual-core. Finally you’ll be working with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box while the original Note was just updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich several weeks ago.

Have a peek at our Galaxy Note II timeline below to learn more and, again, check out our hands-on with the device via the link above. Also be sure to check out the rest of our IFA 2012 coverage to stay up to date on all things pushed in Berlin!

Samsung Galaxy Note II vs Galaxy Note I: Specifications War is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.