Gallery: Samsung Memoir hands-on
Filed under: Cellphones
Video: Samsung Memoir hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I got some quality time with a Garmin Nuviphone G60, riding around Barcelona in the back of a jet-black Mercedes limo. My hands-on impression: This smartphone-meets-GPS-meets-media-player feels like a winner.
I don’t know what it really is: A cellphone that is a GPS or a GPS that is a cellphone. Of course, the cellphone has everything you can expect from a such a device these days, including a 3-megapixel camera (with a real shutter button, like it should be) and a music player, everything tied to the GPS. This seems to be the main point of the Garmin G60: Everything revolves around geo-location.
Physically, the Garmin G60 has a good size: A good feeling on your hand, thicker than you-know-who, but light and comfortable. The thing is made to be integrated on your car dashboard—it comes with a cradle with a suction cup—but it works in your hand as a smartphone just fine.
The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of buttons, except for volume and camera shutter on the right side. On the front, there are no physical buttons whatsoever, just a nice, colorful 3.5-inch touchscreen.
As you can see in the video, the Linux-based operating system is quite agile and appeared solid, although the full HTML browser stalled forever trying to load a page-which is probably a fault of the 3G connection rather than the G60 itself, even while it is still a beta prototype.
The interface seems polished, it feels fast and responsive, very bright and clean, with colorful icons. It’s centered around three main icons, which I’m sure are the ones Garmin wants to emphasize: Call, Search, and View Map. Call and View Map are quite straightforward, with Search giving you several options, from consulting the six million points of interests—already pre-loaded with the North America or European maps built-in the G60—to the on-the-fly Google local search application. This section feels very much like one of their previous GPS, giving you access to Favorites, Contact, or Recently Found addresses, and allowing to visit or calling any place on one click.
On the side (or bottom, if you are in landscape mode-the Garmin G60 has an accelerator to know this, although it didn’t feel very sensitive while I was trying it) you can see a scrolling list of icons, which gives you access to the other features of the G60, from the camera to the web browser to the Ciao! geolocation based social service to widgets like weather. While the main three buttons can’t be changed for the ones in the side list, the whole user interface is well organized and easy to use.
My impression from the hands-on is that Garmin has made what they know to do best—a GPS—and they combined it with a 3G smartphone is a smooth way. The result is a nicely balanced unit that has the advantage of having everything you expect in a GPS and all the features you expect in a modern smartphone, all under an easy to use interface.
We will give you a more extensive verdict once we get a final unit, which is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2009.
I guess that if the Garmin Nuviphone G60 is a GPS smartphone, the Garmin Nuviphone M20 Windows Mobile is a smartphone GPS. It’s quite smaller than the G60, but the demo didn’t work quite right.
It seems that the Garmin Nuviphone M20 we tried—which still doesn’t have a release date—is an early prototype. As a result, we couldn’t try the customized GPS-based search and maps programs: Every time we tried, it kept giving a location services initialization problem. We were told look very similar to the G60, but you just can’t see it in the video. The rest of the phone-developed by Asus-seems OK after our brief hands-on. Garmin has created special skins to mask the furrible Windows Mobile interface.
Physically, the cellphone feels light and compact on your hand, with a nice, colorful finish. The fact that it requires a stylus—even while you can actually use your finger or nail, if you are Ming of Mongo—made it quite awkward to me, although that may just be my personal preference after hours of iPhone fingering.
We will have to wait for a more mature unit to give you our full impressions.
We didn’t doubt it for a second (okay, maybe one second), but Sony’s so-called Idou is for real. Though, we wouldn’t go memorizing that name or anything, ’cause SE has plans to change it to something more commercial before summer. At any rate, the touchscreen-heavy handset — which will run Symbian Foundation at launch — does indeed sport a 12.1 megapixel shooter (which was hinted at last November), which sort of makes the also-just-official Samsung Memoir seem a bit dated already. It’s funny too, as the only dozen megapixeler we were actually expecting at this show was from Samsung. We’re still waiting on the minutiae, but we do know that it will pack a 3.5-inch panel (640 x 320 resolution; no word on capacitive or resistive) and “full media consumption,” a phrase we’re still struggling to digest. More as we get it!
Filed under: Cellphones
Sony Ericsson gets official with “Idou” 12 megapixel mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony Ericsson decided to get a really early start to its Mobile World Congress festivities, packing our jetlagged butts into Central Barcelona for a Sunday evening presser / party. Read on to find out what they’ve got in store!
Continue reading Live from Sony Ericsson’s MWC press conference
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Live from Sony Ericsson’s MWC press conference originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
At this point, it’s tough to say the Memoir wasn’t official with a straight face, but Samsung and T-Mobile have jointly disclosed all (er, most) of the remaining details that were so sorely missing here at Mobile World Congress. The 8 megapixel handset will boast a Xenon flash, CMOS auto focus and 16x digital zoom, not to mention a full touchscreen and a sophisticated camera menu that enables users to adjust the brightness and flash, change the default destination of images, select a timer and zoom in or out. Moreover, the video recording and TV-out features should provide even more joy in the lives of multimedia lovers, and the blink detection, face detection, anti-shake and geotagging inclusions should shake off any remaining pundits who say there’s not a “real camera” in here. As anticipated, the phone will launch exclusively on T-Mobile USA in just ten days (February 25, if you’re too excited for math), though there’s still no mention of a price. Procrastinate much?
Update: Boom, pricing — $249.99 on a two-year contract with a $50 mail-in rebate. Not the cheapest thing we’ve ever seen, but you get what you pay for, yeah?
Filed under: Cellphones
Samsung Memoir hitting T-Mobile USA on February 25 for $249.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Clearly, the flood gates have opened well before Sony Ericsson intended over in Barcelona, as the countdown is still on while we’re watching handset after handset leak out. Next up is the W995 Walkman (can someone say Hikaru?), a multimedia-centric slider which boasts an 8.1 megapixel camera, A-GPS, Google Maps, WiFi, DLNA certification, 118MB of built-in memory, an 8GB M2 card and a 2.6-inch QVGA scratch-resistant display. The mobile should ship in a trio of colors — Progressive Black, Cosmic Silver and Energetic Red — and the inbuilt kickstand should make airplane-based movie watching a touch easier on the neck. No word on a price or release, but SE should be remedying that at any moment.
Update: As you may have caught in our liveblog, the W995 is now very much official, and just as described in its not-quite-official form. SE did have a few small surprises up its sleeve, however, in the form Sony’s MediaGo software, which will let you share media with your PS3 over WiFi, and take advantage of Sony’s PlayNow services, including downloaded movies purchased on your PC. Hit up the gallery below for a closer look.
Filed under: Cellphones
Sony Ericsson’s W995 Walkman slips out ahead of schedule originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve already seen Samsung‘s OmniaHD via a massive MWC billboard, and now it looks like the gang at Samsung Central have managed to get their hands on an official shot of the handset. There’s also an image of the BeatDisc, another entry into the company’s new Beat series alongside the previously-spotted BeatDJ. Other than the appearance of widgets on the OmniaHD’s screen, we’ve got no details on the pair. We’re expecting all mysteries to be solved at Sammy’s press event tomorrow.
Filed under: Cellphones
Samsung OmniaHD and BeatDisc official images revealed originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’re just getting into our seats for Sony Ericsson’s MWC press event, but it looks like the partnership’s newest Symbian offering has leaked a little early. Called the Idou, it sports a 16:9 touchscreen, a 12.1 megapixel camera with a xenon flash, and an official web site that doesn’t seem to be active yet. We’ll hopefully be finding out more in just minutes, we’ll let you know!
Update: Our tipster says the above model might be a concept, but a similar device will be released sometime around the second half of 2009 — we’ll keep you posted as we get more info.
Update 2: Nope — it’s real.
[Thanks, aleksandarkazi]
Filed under: Cellphones
Sony Ericsson Idou revealed a little early originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If the above picture is to be believed, Sony Ericsson‘s looking to release a new swivel-based QWERTY called the “Reese” that boasts one-click access to “your favorite networking sites.” Details beyond this ad are pretty light, and we’re not ruling out the possibility that this might be a fan render (as SE aficionados are fond of). Furthermore, the original poster told forum members at Esato that this device “will not be announced soon,” which makes the appearance of an advertisement even more perplexing. Regardless, we’ll know one way or another soon, as the company is just about to start its MWC press conference… and we’ll be there live.
[Via Boy Genius Report; Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Cellphones
Sony Ericsson “Reese” flip QWERTY smartphone leaked? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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