Hasta La Gadget!

A gaggle of higher-ups from Sony Ericsson stuck around after the conclusion of today’s event to show off the X10 mini, X10 mini pro, and Vivaz pro in person, and we seriously can’t stress this enough: the mini twins are small. Well, either that, or the men holding them were gigantic — but we’re pretty sure it’s the former since we got around to spending some quality time with the mini pro and continued to be blown away by its diminutive stature. Rikko Sakaguchi (pictured left) had two colors of the mini plus a Vivaz pro, while Lennard Hoornik was rockin’ the original X10 plus a mini pro. We’ll be honest: the company’s platform strategy is as meandering and muddled as ever, but with designs like this in the pipeline, they’ll definitely be demanding their fair share of attention over the next few months. See a bunch more shots of the execs handling the phones in the gallery below.

Sir Howard Stringer and friends show off Sony Ericsson’s new handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, we just had our first encounter with Samsung’s new Bada-sporting Wave handset. We’ll say this to start… the screen is gorgeous, and the phone itself is super fast. No hesitation almost anywhere, but it’s hard to make a judgment call at this point. A lot of the software seemed unfinished, and we saw a few crashes and weird behavior. Still, it’s clearly a device capable of handling some pretty intense work, and a Samsung rep we spoke to wanted to emphasize its ability to multitask. We were also told that the phone has more than 512MB of RAM, which is notable for a device of this type. We’re going to play with it a bit more and flesh out our impressions, but for now feast your eyes on the gallery… and check the video after the break!

A few more takeaways (with some input from senior editor Thomas Ricker):

• Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, that feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot to it that we haven’t seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
• There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape — as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn’t seem to be word prediction in place right now.
• The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
• The display wasn’t always responding to touches, and at least one unit completely froze on us.
• For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device. Correction… we just tried pinching and zooming on the phone and while it did create some kind of zoom result, it also kept giving us an error! Furthermore, when we tried to load an image heavy site, it forced the phone into its task manager mode and made us close all applications before we could proceed with using the phone. Clearly there is work to be done.

Continue reading Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!)

Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Sony Ericsson outs Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro

Sony Ericsson outs Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How’s about a little smartphone love on Valentine’s Day? Samsung’s press conference just got underway in Barcelona, and one of Mobile World Congress‘ first smartphones to debut this year is a real doozy. The Wave (S8500) that we’ve heard so much about lately is finally official, and it’s the first handset to ship with Bluetooth 3.0. It’s also packing 802.11n WiFi, TouchWiz 3.0 and the company’s own Bada mobile platform. You’ll also get a 3.3-inch “Super AMOLED” (saywha?) display, and while the 800 x 480 resolution is just dandy, the lack of multitouch is a real buzz kill. Digging into the internals, you’ll find a 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, aGPS, accelerometer, 2GB or 8GB of internal storage space, a microSD expansion slot, multi-codec support for DivX, XviD, MP3 and WMV, and support for virtual 5.1 surround sound and 720p recording / decoding. The company’s also touting its mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine) technology, which is already used in its LCD and LED TV lineups; in other words, this phone is probably one of the better ones for multimedia viewing (so long as you don’t venture under direct sunlight, of course). It’ll be available worldwide starting in April, but unfortunately pricing remains a mystery. Full specifications and press release are after the break.

Update: Check out our hands-on with the device! The at show prototypes do respond to multi-touch pinch and zoom… with an error. But at least the detect it.

Continue reading Samsung Wave: 3.3-inch Super AMOLED, Bluetooth 3.0, and new Bada OS (updated)

Samsung Wave: 3.3-inch Super AMOLED, Bluetooth 3.0, and new Bada OS (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Live from Samsung’s 2010 MWC press event

Live from Samsung’s 2010 MWC press event originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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