Samsung CA750 wireless Central Station eyes-on

We heard a brief mention of Samsung’s Central Station during its first press event, but it wasn’t until we had a chance to check it out for ourselves on the floor did we really understand how the monitor / wireless docking station worked. Turns out it’s thanks to a USB dongle that connects the laptop in question to the rest of the setup. A clever idea, for sure, but we’d definitely need to put it through the ringer before we’d suggest. The 23-inch and 27-inch models are coming in March with prices as-yet unspoken. Enjoy the pictures below!

Samsung CA750 wireless Central Station eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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4G at CES 2011: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile make big moves

Traditionally, CES isn’t a huge mobile event — the biggest phone news has historically been saved for MWC in February and CTIA in March — but that changed in a huge way this week. Looks like 2011 is shaping up to be the year of 4G, and both carriers and manufacturers alike wasted no time jumping on the hype bandwagon with a variety of announcements that promise to make the next few months exciting… and really, really fast. AT&T kicked things off early in the show, but it was just the beginning of a relentless torrent of mobile news that lasted for days and ultimately left us with a pile of devices and network upgrades that should take us at least through the middle of the year. Read on for the recap!

Continue reading 4G at CES 2011: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile make big moves

4G at CES 2011: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile make big moves originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung shows flexible and transparent displays at CES 2011 (video)

We spent a few minutes at the show this week ogling the prototype displays that Samsung’s Mobile Display unit has produced over the last few months, headlined by some particularly awesome 4.5-inch flexible and 19-inch transparent AMOLEDs. Let’s start with the flexible unit: Sammy seems to be particularly excited about this one, demonstrating on video that it’s shatter-proof by bashing it repeatedly with a sledgehammer — compare that to the inevitably disastrous consequences of dropping an iPhone onto concrete, and they’ve already won us over. Although the company still has some manufacturing challenges to overcome, commercial interest seems to be strong and they’ll eventually be on the market (though not in 2011, sadly).

The picture for the transparent displays is a little murkier — both physically and from a business perspective. Though they’re not as clear as regular glass or as crisp and bright as a traditional AMOLED display, you’ve got to marvel at what they’re doing here: full see-through color at effectively small television sizes. Interestingly, Samsung tells us that they’re really close to being production-ready with these — possibly even close than the flexible screens — but they’re still looking for business cases that’d make mass-producing them a worthwhile venture. Follow the break for some video of these bad boys, along with a 7-inch Super AMOLED that’s looking Galaxy Tab-ready (and some other goodies)!

Continue reading Samsung shows flexible and transparent displays at CES 2011 (video)

Samsung shows flexible and transparent displays at CES 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could this be the year we get to ditch the cable box?

We’ve been coming to CES for years looking at demos of technologies that will let us watch HDTV without a set-top box, and yet here we are years later with little choice but to find a place to put that box. The big failures have been CableCARD and then tru2way, both of which have had little impact to mainstream America. But despite all of our disappointment over the years, we came away from CES this year with the feeling that this might actually be the year. Of course, the allure of Vegas has yet to wear off, but when Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV and Verizon FiOS TV are at the same show sending almost the same message and showing demos, we have a hard time not taking our skeptical shield down a little. Sadly it wasn’t exactly the same message, and if you click on through you might discover the true future of how TV will be delivered.

Continue reading Could this be the year we get to ditch the cable box?

Could this be the year we get to ditch the cable box? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s ultrathin 9 Series laptop coming in February

We didn’t have a date for Samsung’s 9 Series when it became official a couple of days ago, but now we do: it’s coming next month. Sammy’s press release makes sure to run us through all the bodacious specs of this 13.3-inch machine, including the LED-backlit display with 400 nits of brightness, 128GB SSD, 1.4GHz Core i5-2537M CPU, and MacBook Air-like proportions, before disclosing its arrival month as February 2011. The starting price is still a high and mighty $1,599, but then you do get a pretty stellar laptop for your cash money. Check out the full announcement after the break.

[Thanks, Mario]

Continue reading Samsung’s ultrathin 9 Series laptop coming in February

Samsung’s ultrathin 9 Series laptop coming in February originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung enters new Galaxy with BabyView range of infant video monitors

Talk about broadening one’s horizon. Samsung took a break from pushing its connected HDTVs and Galaxy S line here at CES to introduce something just a wee bit different: a baby video monitor line. Yeah, seriously. The BabyView range is said to be engineered to fit into the wild and crazy lifestyles of “tech-savvy parents,” enabling proud mamas and papas to share audio and video of their youngster with friends and family via Twitter and Facebook. How so? It’ll log video onto a built-in SD card, which can then be offloaded and transferred — not exactly the most seamless process in the world, but hey, there it is. The whole line will offer night vision, two-way talking, sound / vibration alerts, a remote nightlight, SD card slot and networked support for up to four cameras. Hop on past the break if you need specifics, and look for the whole lot to land this spring for between $199 and $299.

Continue reading Samsung enters new Galaxy with BabyView range of infant video monitors

Samsung enters new Galaxy with BabyView range of infant video monitors originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 06:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung Smart Touch Remote and Smart TV hands-on

Samsung made a lot of noise about its first-party Smart TV initiative yesterday, so we had to stop by and check things out — especially that new WiFi-based RMC30D Smart Touch Remote, which comes bundled with all new 8000-series TVs and above. (It also works with the 7000 series, but you have to buy it separately.) Unfortunately, things weren’t working so well — tons of WiFi interference in the area made control hard to do, and the system itself was a confusing UI nightmare made worse by the remote’s slow resistive touchscreen. Oh, and did we mention that the remote itself is a straight-up iPhone 3G KIRF? Because yeah — it is. Things were slightly improved when we loaded up the soon-to-be-released Android control app on a nearby Fascinate, but that didn’t fix the essential issues with the UI — it’s very much just a picture of a regular remote drawn on the screen, which rarely works well on a touchscreen device. Don’t just take our word for it — check the video after the break.

Continue reading Samsung Smart Touch Remote and Smart TV hands-on

Samsung Smart Touch Remote and Smart TV hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung NX11 hands-on

It’s always a shame we don’t have more time to play with every gadget at monstrous trade shows, and that goes double for cameras. So while we can’t give you more in-depth discussion on the image and video quality, we will say that Samsung’s NX11’s inclusion of the i-Function lens is a decided victory. For those who don’t know, it’s a special lens with a ring and i-Fn button you can use to manually adjust various settings (exposure, ISO, shutter speed, etc.), and it works like a charm. Looking at pictures of a picture-taking device is some form of awesome, right? Right.

Samsung NX11 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Big, Beautiful and Badass: The 9 Coolest Android Smartphones at CES

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Motorola Atrix


LAS VEGAS — We knew there would be a slew of new smartphones appearing at CES 2011 — and we weren’t disappointed.

From Samsung to Sony Ericsson, Android-dedicated handset debuts have been surrounded by the “oohs” and “aahs” of nerd-struck admirers.

We’ve seen the big: Motorola’s Droid Bionic touts a huge 4.3-inch display, yet is still outgunned by the mammoth 4.5 inches of Samsung’s Infuse. Even the LG Optimus 2X’s respectable 4-inch screen seemed dwarf-like in comparison.

CES 2011There’s the badass: Powerhouse processors clocking in at 1 GHz and higher are in like Flynn. Motorola’s Atrix 4G and LG’s Optimus 2X, for instance, are running dual-core 1-GHz NVidia Tegra 2 processors.

And then there’s the beautiful: LG’s Optimus Black boasts it’s the “world’s slimmest 9.2-mm device,” while Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc has a thickness of only 8.7 mm at its waist. Being beautiful still means being thin, apparently.

Whether it’s brawn or beauty, these are some of the coolest Android phones we saw in Vegas this year.

Above:

Motorola Atrix

The Atrix was one of the coolest announcements Motorola made, mostly because of its WebTop Dock. If you connect the dock to a larger display like your desktop monitor, the phone outputs a desktop-like user interface. You even use a mouse and keyboard to navigate it. We got some quality time with the Atrix (despite the best efforts of Motorola’s employees to stop us) and came away impressed.

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Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


The Best New Blu-ray Player [BestOfTheBest]

They’re the cornerstones of our home theaters—and there’s always an ungodly number of them at CES. We scrutinized this year’s more intriguing 3D Blu-ray players and found the one that looks like the king of the hill. More »