Hasta La Gadget!

If success is judged by anticipation, the Samsung GALAXY S 4 is already a winner. Hotly discussed in the months leading up to today’s big reveal, expectations for the phone have varied wildly from a ground-shaking rethink to a buff and polish of the best-selling Galaxy S III. The end result, though, treads a line between the two: familiar and yet bursting with new functionality, and refined in ways that, while not perhaps the most headline-catching, nonetheless keep Samsung’s hardware at the top of its game. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.

From the outset, it’s clear that Samsung hasn’t strayed too far from the formula that made the Galaxy S III so successful. The new phone follows in the family style footsteps, though while the dimensions are similar to before – the same 136.6mm length, slightly wider at 69.8mm, and slightly thinner at 7.9mm – Samsung has managed to squeeze in a larger display. The new Super AMOLED HD screen measures in at 5-inches, versus the 4.7- of the older phone, and now runs at a crisp 1080p resolution for 441ppi pixel density.

Even just accommodating a screen of that size without a significant change in size is impressive, but the panel itself is a good one too. It’s still PenTile, which is likely to make some display purists groan, but it keeps the great contrast and rich colors we’re familiar with from AMOLED. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the similarly 1080p (though slightly smaller) HTC One’s LCD3 screen is a little more natural and pleasing to our eyes, though.

If HTC has focused its software efforts on BlinkFeed and Zoe, Samsung has cast its net wide, basically throwing everything at the wall in the expectation that at least something will stick for most users. The 13-megapixel main camera (paired with a 2-megapixel front camera) gets a new suite of features, such as the ability to take two photos or videos simultaneously from the front and rear cameras and combine them into one, Samsung Dual Shot, and being able to append up to nine seconds of audio to a still, to give it some context when you later review it. Samsung calls that Sound-in-Shot, though while it’s clever, we’re not quite as impressed as we were by HTC Zoe.

There’s also no shortage of signs that Samsung has its eye on what’s currently fashionable in mobile. So, there’s Cinema Photo, which basically creates a cinemagram-style animated photo without demanding a third-party app, and Drama Shot, which builds a single frame out of multiple burst-photography stills. You can easily share a group of images about, say, a recent holiday in a Story Album, complete with facts from Trip Advisor; that can later be printed courtesy of a tie-in with Blurb.

The Galaxy S III introduced eye-recognition for keeping its display active, and the GALAXY S 4 builds on that with Smart Pause and Smart Scroll. When you look away from the screen during video playback, the phone automatically pauses it until you look back; similarly, if you’re looking at the S 4 and reading a longer list, then simply tilting the phone scrolls through it. The GALAXY S 4 is pretty obsessed by where your fingers are, too: the Galaxy Note II, for instance, could track whether its S Pen nib was hovering over the screen but not touching, but now the S 4 can do the same only recognizing your fingertips.

That means you can peep inside folders and galleries, or at the content of unopened messages, simply by floating your fingertips over the top of them; Samsung has also brought in some third-party app support, with titles like Flipboard also supporting the Hover feature to preview new stories. It’s not the only way the GALAXY S 4 is watching you. Air Browse, Air Jump, and Air Call Accept all track hand movements, allowing you to wave and gesture your way through menus, answering calls – which we could see being particularly usefully when you’re driving – and controlling music playback.

When you can pretty much count on your phone selling in the millions, you can start to look at how different units interact, as Samsung has with the GALAXY S 4. There’s Group Play for audio, video, and gaming playback, creating ad-hoc local networks of multiple handsets all running the same content synchronized, for instance, with support for games like Asphalt 7 and Gun Bros 2 working with the feature. There’s also S Translator in the latest version of ChatON, the messaging app, and the email app, usefully switching between languages rather than forcing you to copy and paste into something like Google Translate.

Samsung has really gone to town on added-extras – in fact the number of times you might have to dig into Google Play for a third-party solution is shrinking all the time. There’s a business card scanner – which also usefully gets S Translator baked-in, to pick out and convert foreign addresses and job titles – and an IR blaster which, with the new Samsung WatchON app, turns the phone into a remote control complete with EPG and on-demand access.

The rest of the hardware basically backs up that software flourish with the power the Galaxy S4 needs to deliver on its promises. Different geographies will get different processors, depending on the combination of LTE and other factors, with Samsung choosing between the quadcore Snapdragon 1.9Ghz and its own eight-core 1.6Ghz Exynos 5. . No matter the chip, there’ll be 2GB of memory to accompany it, and the usual 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of internal capacity. Samsung has also stuck with expandable memory and a removable battery, something neither the HTC One nor the iPhone 5 offer, features which remain popular among power-users and business customers.

Image and sound processing also get worked over, with Samsung Adapt Sound and Adapt Display. We’ve seen such DSP used to good effect by Sony and others, and the Galaxy S4 benefits too, though when it comes to sound it’s clear that nothing can replace big drivers. The HTC One’s custom speaker system and Beats Audio processing still has the edge, to our ears.

Samsung didn’t stint on accessories for the Galaxy S III – at a time when, while iPhone had a thriving ecosystem of third-party add-ons, Android devices still lacked anything so cohesive – and the company hasn’t slowed down with the Galaxy S4. There’s a new S View Cover, like a flip-cover only with a window cut through that allows a small part of the smartphone’s display to remain powered-up and show battery, signal status, music playlists, and incoming call details. That’s courtesy of AMOLED’s capability to only power a small subset of an overall display, and sip battery while it does so.

Then there are the new add-ons to go with S Health. Samsung did have some health & fitness tech for the previous Galaxy, but the S4 steps it up a notch, timely given the focus on wearables and monitoring right now. Software-only, S Health will work as a pedometer as well as tracking temperature and humidity, in addition to allowing users to log their food (with a huge database in the background of nutritional information). However, there’s also Samsung S Band, a Bluetooth-enabled tracker in the manner of a Jawbone UP, which logs data even if the GALAXY S 4 isn’t nearby, and then synchronizes with it once they’re back in range. Samsung also has a Bluetooth-enabled body scale and heart-rate monitor, which also feed their recordings into the phone.

Expectations for the GALAXY S 4 have been high, but Samsung has taken the evolutionary rather than revolutionary path for its new phone. Then again, it didn’t have to: sales of the Galaxy S III remain brisk, and the company has the marketing budget to hammer home its latest message. It also avoids frustrating existing owners too greatly: they’ll be getting software updates which add many of the new Samsung-exclusive additions, and haven’t been left too far behind with the hardware.

That said, should Galaxy S III users upgrade to the GALAXY S 4? If you insist on being on the very latest hardware, and you’re wedded to Samsung, then perhaps it’s a no-brainer. However, it’s not the vast step-up we saw from, say, the Galaxy S II to its successor. In fact, while the hardware is cutting-edge, it’s clear that Samsung’s efforts this time around have really been focused on software enhancements. Some won’t care about things like the IR blaster or Group Play, but will lap up the S Health system and Air Gestures, or vice-versa, but either way there’s a sense that there’s something for everybody.

On the one hand, that’s liberating – after all, why should everyone use the same device in the same way? – but on the other it can get overwhelming and confusing. The appeal of the HTC One is not only that it’s built so well (leagues ahead, we must say, than the in-hand-feel of the GALAXY S 4) but that it focuses on doing a couple of things particularly well, in ways that make a significant difference to the user over and above the standard Android OS.

We’ll confess to a certain sense of unease, then, about how the GALAXY S 4 will find its place in the smartphone market today. Samsung has done what it needed to – in the manner of Apple and the transition between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S – to bring its flagship up to speed. Promotion and advertising will take care of the rest. If that overshadows phones like the HTC One, however, devices which really do take a more revolutionary approach, then we’d be mightily disappointed.

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 will sell by the bucket-load. Everybody knows that. But in a way we’re still more thankful for its predecessor and how that forced every other Android OEM to raise its game for 2013. That’s better for consumers, and more interesting for us. We’ll have to wait until we can review the Galaxy S4 before we can tell whether it’s actually the best Android device of the lot, however.

Samsung GALAXY S 4 Hands-on is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If this year’s Mobile World Congress taught us one thing, it’s that no matter how interesting and innovative the gadget makers and software developers of our global community are, it’s the top brands that end up making or breaking the show. Make or break the show for the press, that is. Case in point: our several articles written from our chat with Google’s Mathias Duarte – they ended up easily becoming some of the most popular posts we had this week, and Google didn’t reveal any new products at the convention. In fact, they didn’t have a stand – the chat we had wasn’t even on the map. And yet, there it is – Google stole the show anyway.

Another oddity in our biggest hits of the week was an early tip we received from an intrepid early-entrant to the convention. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was photographed on a large screen standing proud at the massive Samsung booth that was opened early the next day. Even though Samsung really only “revealed” one new piece of hardware at the show, that single piece of hardware – and subsequent posts about that device’s power – ended up being more popular than many of our other hands-on and up-to-the-minute news posts.

From Brand New to Brand Reinforcement

While this year’s convention in Barcelona was larger than past years – at a new, larger venue with more floor space than ever – it ended up being commented on as more “dry” than shows in past years. That’s a rather subjecting thing to say, of course, but take note of massive releases at Mobile World Congress in the past, and you’ll see the trend. Instead of revealing brand new never-before-seen lines of devices and unique services at the convention, companies now appear to be showing more “here’s another from our already successful line” items – or no new hardware or software at all.

2010: The HTC Desire, Samsung Wave S8500 (with Bada!), Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Toshiba TG02 and K01, Acer Liquid e, and a whole lot more. [MWC 2010 tag portal]

2011: NVIDIA shows their Tegra roadmap and the superhero-themed code-names for processors we’re still seeing revealed today. Samsung reveals the Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. LG shows the LG Optimus Pad (aka G-Slate) and the LG Optimus 3D. HTC shows a collection of smartphones and a tablet, as well as the Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha. Google shows up with Eric Schmidt to speak at a main keynote while the Google Pod exploded unto the collective minds of attendees. [MWC 2011 tag portal]

2012: HTC revealed their HTC One series with the HTC One X, S, and V. ASUS shows a full line of Android-powered beastly tablets. The LG Optimus Vu, Sony XPERIA P, and game-changing Nokia Lumia 808 with 41-megapixel camera were all revealed – see more Nokia action in our 2012 MWC Nokia wrap-up specifically. Samsung seems to have started the trend of revealing their hero devices outside of MWC here with just two reveals at the event, one of them being the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Qualcomm brought the Snapdragon S4 dual-core SoC, Texas Instruments showed the OMAP 5, and oddly, Microsoft showed up to bring on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Google again brought Eric Schmidt and another Google Pod. [MWC 2012 tag portal]

This year we saw ASUS show a new version of a concept they’ve released before in the ASUS PadFone Infinity and a re-skinned but perfectly recognizable 7-inch tablet called the FonePad – look like the Nexus 7 to you? (Incase you did not know, they made that too, revealing it in an early iteration back at CES 2012 at the NVIDIA keynote then re-revealing it at Google I/O 2012 as the Nexus 7.)

We also saw Nokia reveal two new smartphones that apply what they’ve learned with the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices they’ve had on the market for several months to two new sizes: Lumia 720 and Lumia 520. Groups like HTC and Motorola decided against revealing anything new at all, with the HTC One having been revealed one week earlier than the conference and the Motorola RAZR lineup being the center of a rather low-traffic Motorola presence.

The folks at HP decided to take a swipe at creating a real-deal Android tablet (quite likely because of the odd success the HP TouchPad had after it was essentially given away post-WebOS cut) – have a peek at the HP Slate 7 and see the Beats grab hold again.

ZTE revealed a new rather large smartphone in the Grand Memo, here showing for the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC – but the actual hardware won’t be in stores until the third quarter of this year. LG brought on a relatively impressive selection of devices including the LG Optimus G Pro – but that device was revealed well before the conference started as well. The only things LG actually revealed during the conference were items like the “world’s smallest wireless charger” and a bit of some (admittedly rather impressive) HD wireless transmission technology.

If you’ll have a look at each of the several hands-on posts we’ve got from LG, you’ll see that they’ve really only confirmed that they’re sticking with the design language they wrote with the still-popular LG Optimus G. These devices are going to be winners, but as far as LG revealing their biggest beasts of the year at MWC – that simply didn’t happen. A “true” replacement for the LG Optimus G will come later this year in an LG-run event separate from a press conference, we estimate – you can count on it. The most interested news this week touching LG was, without a doubt, their purchase of WebOS from HP – the repercussions of this have not yet begun to ripple!

Where are the heroes?

So you’ve got Google who, for the past two years, had set up a playland of Android bits and pieces throughout the convention, deciding here to continue to command like a sigil guardian. There was no official Google stand, but they were there – and they did hold one heck of a yearly party. You’ll see more of the Google Head Space action in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour of MWC 2013 – complete with Tinie Tempah, Florence and the Machine, and one massive amount of bright lights and dancing Androids – and a Google Play lounge as well.

Samsung remained a magnificently massive force on the floor, even with but one new device – again, an expansion of a line they’ve been building for a while now. Samsung continued to drop massive amounts of cash on advertising around the city during the week (and beyond, we’re sure), and had what very well may have been the largest hands-on-centric booth at the convention. There’s some contention amongst analysts (and would-be analysts) who cannot decide whether Samsung has “abandoned” the show by only revealing one device or are supporting it more than ever with such a hearty floor presence – with devices, to be fair, not everyone there had seen before.

HTC had for the past several years used Mobile World Congress as their big blast-off point for the whole year. This year they – perhaps rather wisely – decided to have a launch a week before the Spain-based show. This way they were able to capture several days of press on technology news sites for themselves AND offer hands-on looks at the device – the HTC One – to convention-goers too.

The NVIDIA crew did indeed bring some fire to the show with hands-on looks at both a Tegra 4-toting developer tablet and the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, made specifically for Tegra 4i. I don’t know if I can drive this point home enough times, but here it goes again: while the Phoenix device was new, the main subject remained the Tegra 4i (and the Tegra 4), with NVIDIA letting the news about everything they had at MWC 2013 – more or less – out well before the convention started so as to keep more press time to themselves – more than they’d get on convention week.

Qualcomm also had a rather large presence on the floor with their vast array of demonstrations of both devices running their hardware and showings of what’s possible in the near future with services such as AllJoyn. Qualcomm’s biggest push this past week was, indeed, for AllJoyn and the “Internet of Everything” as it appears that we’re getting really, really close to the beginning of that connectivity hitting the market. As AllJoyn gets closer to real announcements of hardware manufacturer and developers being on-board, the AllJoyn Alliance begins its switch from just OeM/Developer outreach to public outreach so users know what it’s all about. See our features with both the President of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. Rob Chandhok and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as well as our Qualcomm tag portal for the full story.

But again, most announcements made were not for a brand new product or service, but for expansions of services and the strengthening of bonds – with the occasional smartphone or tablet reveal mixed in.

It’s the function of the convention that’s changing

While we’ve heard more than just a few people suggesting that this is the year the tech convention dies, I’d like to suggest a different possibility. The function of the tech convention is morphing. It’s the collection of reasons that hardware companies, software companies, developers, and the press head to these conventions and present themselves that’s changing.

In the past – for a while – a company would come to a large convention such as Mobile World Congress to reveal their newest products. Very recently, it’s become clear to many large companies that they’re able to get more attention – and prolonged attention – if they host their own separate event for each product they launch during the year.

The method of creating separate non-convention events held by manufacturers of hardware (and sometimes software) will soon be the unquestionably dominant expected way of things. They’ll also be the “reveal” point for any truly important product. For the press that’s able to travel to each of these events during the year, the larger conventions will grow less and less important to attend.

For everyone else, conventions like Mobile World Congress will continue to represent an opportunity to get hands-on time with products they might otherwise have to wait to see in stores – and they’ll continue to be great for networking person-to-person as well.

Evolution

For someone like you, the reader, this all means that you’ll get your hands-on looks at brand new devices spread out further throughout the year as opposed to having them all bunched up at CES, CTIA, MWC, and the like. And that’s fine with us!

Spread the announcement love more evenly across the year and we expect we’ll have a more tasty experience. Maintaining interest in the consumer technology universe through releases spread out over the year means a healthier – and less predictable – industry as a whole.

Or so we hope!

Have a peek at our [Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal] to see everything we saw this year at the convention, and stay tuned to SlashGear for more. We’re expecting big releases from companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Google relatively soon – and that they’ll be breaking out the release love more frequently than restricting themselves to conventions such as these would otherwise allow. Excitement on the horizon!

Technology conventions aren’t dying – they’re evolving is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Augmented reality is going to be big, and Canon is jumping straight in with its MREAL System for Mixed Reality, a combination of a clever head-mounted display and integration with 3D graphics software to create a real-time virtual world you can interact with. Better known for its cameras, Canon is bringing that knowledge of lenses and optics to an innovative display system that blends the real world with computer graphics, using marker recognition so that physical objects can be picked out and manipulated in the digital environment. We caught up with Canon to try MREAL out, and see what you get for $125,000.

Canon is implemented true mediated reality with its headset, using stereoscopic cameras on the front of the HM-A1 HMD to take a view of the real world and then overlaying computer graphics, which are then fed to the twin displays inside. They run at 1280 x 960 resolution, higher than many cheaper HMDs we’ve seen, and use a specially created free-form prism display system that Canon claims means less distortion and fewer optical aberrations around the periphery.

Capturing and displaying graphics is only part of the overall system, however. The MREAL setup also requires tracking data, to know where the user is looking and what they’re interacting with, and of course a software platform that hooks into whatever 3D environment you’re exploring. On the sensor side, there’s a combination of visual markers and an optional gyroscopic sensor, the latter of which tracks the orientation of the headset in space per frame of video.

It’s the markers, though, that are more commonly relied upon. MREAL can work with optical and magnetic sensors, including third-party brands, but the most obvious are a series of QR-like glyphs which can be used to mark the sides of a physical mock-up. By tracking those glyphs, MREAL can map the movement of the virtual object against the user’s manipulation of its physical counterpart.

So, a basic model of a car, or a camera, or the control surface in the plane could be marked out with a few MREAL glyphs, and then Canon’s system will overlay whatever proposed controls or components are intended. The wearer can interact with those controls as if they were real, able to “look around” the environment with the physical perfectly matched to the digital representation.

On the software side, Canon’s MR Platform has been designed to hook into the most common CAD and 3D visualization packages, with an MR Platform SDK to make integrating existing graphic design software with MREAL straightforward. RTT, the makers of 3D visualization software RTT DeltaGen, has already confirmed it will be combining the package with MREAL; existing customers include Audi, BMW, GM, Ferrari, and Porsche, as well as Adidas and Electrolux.

It’s not just prototyping and industrial design that Canon sees as benefiting from MREAL, however. Another avenue the company is pushing is museum use, where visitors would be able to don an HM-A1 headset and have characters – whether famous faces from history, dinosaurs, wild animals, or fantasy constructions – appear in the real-world with them, interacting as if themselves real. Another possibility is retail, where designers of custom furniture, architects, and others could use MREAL to walk their customers through the design refinement process, tailoring the final product to them without costly iterative prototyping along the way.

Compared to the wearable displays we’ve seen on Google’s Glass and from others, Canon’s is obviously a league ahead. The blending of the digital graphics and what’s actually going on around you is surprisingly good, with the mapping of the two very accurate. You can see your hands – if the system decides they’re relevant to the environment – and after a little acclimatization, it really is like you’re handling a more complex object or coming face to face with a dinosaur.

Interactive Demo Gallery

We tried several demos with the MREAL system, tailored to different potential clients. In an educational-style environment, we were able to interact with a virtual dinosaur, walk around it and pet it, while still seeing other people in the vicinity not wearing a Canon HMD. In another setup, we were able to virtually “kick the tires” of a digital car, customizing colors and trim, exploring the dashboard, and generally seeing what we could expect to be driving despite the real-world object being far more basic in its design. A virtual earth-mover allowed us to experience the cabin and identify ergonomic flaws, such as controls that blocked access to the cup holder, and which might normally demand a physical prototype be built before the issue was identified. There’s more details in our hands-on videos.

Hands-on Demo Gallery

As Canon and its partners see it, the big difference between something like Glass and its MREAL system is the introduction of haptics. “We’re already overloading the eyes as it is” Simiosys’ Christopher Stapleton explained to us. “The question is what’s going through what channel, and how. So, this whole aspect of multitasking isn’t about the number of tasks, it’s about competition for attention.”

“You have all the senses, in all dimensions and all directions, all this impact, we’re overloading the eyes in proportion to the hearing, or the touch. The eyes have depth-perception to a certain extent, but the only interactive sense we have is touch, so the aspect of mixed-reality and haptics is a huge jump in how much we can do. What [Google] is doing is too much in one area.”

Meanwhile, the traditional idea of a GUI – whether text or icons – is quickly becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of what today’s systems can deliver. Instead, Stapleton argues, systems like MREAL can take what would be a very complex interface and make it more naturalistic. Today’s users aren’t looking for ever-increasing menus and toolbars, he says, but gesture response, social interaction, and a more human way of encountering the digital world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all this doesn’t come cheap. Canon will be selling the entire MREAL Mixed Reality System – the HM-A1 headset and the MR Platform software – for $125,000 from March 1, with a $25,000 annual maintenance fee on top. That might sound expensive, but Canon balances it against the existing costs companies face of producing a hardware prototype. That process – which can be relatively quickly and affordably mocked-up virtually using MREAL – is an even more expensive one, and it’s easy to see how MREAL could earn its keep over time.

Canon MREAL Mixed Reality Presentation Gallery

Canon MREAL Mixed Reality Hands-on is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The FCC is typically pretty good at confirming new devices before they’re officially revealed, and today it’s doing just that. A listing for the 3G Nexus 7 has popped up on the FCC’s website (as uncovered by The Digital Reader), which essentially confirms that it will be one of the devices Google announces during its Android event next Monday. In other words, get ready, because there should be a heaping helping of new Android devices revealed at the event.

Of course, there’s no way to be 100% positive until Google gives us some official word, but our friends at Android Community point out that this new device is called the “ASUS ME370TG.” The original Nexus 7 was the “ASUS ME370T,” so it isn’t exactly difficult to connect the dots in this particular instance. What’s unknown at this point, however, is whether or not this 3G Nexus 7 will also be the 32GB model we’ve been hearing so much about.

At the moment, we’re going to go ahead and assume that it is, but it’s also possible that Google will reveal separate Wi-Fi-only and 3G Nexus 7s with 32GB of storage. In any case, it seems pretty clear now that Google will be announcing some kind of new Nexus 7 model during its event, so it’s officially time to get excited. After all, a new Nexus 7 model isn’t the only thing Google is rumored to have up its sleeve.

Rumors also say that it will be revealing the LG Nexus 4, along with the Samsung Nexus 10. It appears that there will be plenty of Nexus to go around, so now all we need to do is play the waiting game until October 29 arrives. Monday is just four short days away – are you ready for whatever Google has planned?

Nexus 7 3G pops up on FCC website is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you were thinking about forgetting that the Galaxy Note II existed for one reason or another, the party happening tonight hosted by Samsung and starring no less than Kanye West is surely meant to change your mind. With the Samsung Galaxy Note II about to be available on several carriers across the United States and abroad, this week Samsung has brought on a media event blast normally reserved for a slightly less publicized event than this – ie a product announcement. Here though, it’s all about keeping the thunder while Microsoft is in town.

This week New York is also home to the premiere of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, with hardware manufacturers and software titans bringing their own fire throughout the week. The biggest Microsoft showing is set for Thursday as well, it containing both a live-televised press event and a major Times Square send off the likes of which the world has never seen – it’s the most screens taken over by a single company, after all.

We’ll be at the Microsoft Windows 8 press event tomorrow morning too, mind you. It’s a full week with more lovely mobile and near-mobile action than the computing universe can handle.

At Microsoft’s approach, Samsung about to be out-done. With the Galaxy Note II already up in international reviews as well as national reviews, the push this week acts more as a waving of a flag than it does an opening of door. Kanye West is here to knock the door down and wave the flag like a maniac, one way or another.

We’ll be at this stop on the Galaxy Note II World Tour 2012 throughout the night. We’ll let you know how it goes. Stay tuned, and check the timeline below for more Galaxy Note II hands-on action!

Samsung descends upon NYC to out-do Microsoft with Kanye West is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.