Let the Gaming begin! Using the Ultrabook branding, Samsung have officially announced two interesting Ultrabooks that extend the category in a number of directions. The Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks will offer a larger screen option, terabyte storage and AMD HD7550M discreet graphics in some models.
Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks launched in homeland, South Korea today.
The press release introduces two models…
Prefer your Ultrabook in two separate parts for portability between big-screen desks? Fancy being ahead of the curve on touch-enabled Ultrabooks? The Samsung Series 7 Slate (XE700) is a tablet you need to pay attention too. After months of waiting (we did our first tests on this back in September) it’s shipping and you can expect a range of reports from various sites next week.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is one of the most hotly anticipated devices currently in the tablet sector. Despite being announced way back at the beginning of September, it is still not officially available; pricing and release date info about the Galaxy Tab 7.7 has been quite hard to come by.
During the IFA show where it was announced, Samsung literally removed the Galaxy Tab 7.7 from their displays; it’s been theorized that this had something to do with the Apple/Samsung lawsuit, but that’s not ever been confirmed as far as I’m aware. Presumably, the reason that the device was removed from IFA is the same reason why the Galaxy Tab 7.7 seems to have been in hiding ever since its initial unveiling.
Fortunately, Ritchie of Ritchie’s room is bringing the Galaxy Tab 7.7 out of hiding. He’s calling it the best 7″ tablet yet. At 340 grams and 7.9mm thick, Ritchie is very impressed with the weight and thickness, especially given the premium build-quality. He’s prepared a nice video overview of the Galaxy Tab 7.7, check it out here:
In addition to the video, Ritchie has a much more thorough inspection of the Galaxy Tab 7.7, along with some great photos, over at his blog. Go check it out!
Looking more like an ultra thin Atom-based netbook rather than an Intel Core-based notebook the Samsung Series 9 900X1B combines quality throughout and presents it in a very stylish and portable package that’s capable of some smooth, desktop-like computing experiences. Not everything is perfect but now that prices have dropped since launch, this 1KG wonder will fit the bill for those looking for a very small and light, capable notebook. It’s not strictly an Ultrabook but is build around the same principles.
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At the beginning of the year, if you would have told me that, by the summer, there would be a dozen different Android tablets available for order from reliable, first tier manufacturers, I would have told you to get outta town. We were likely all desensitized to the constant stream of news that seemingly had the same message: “Company X announced the Y Tablet today. It features blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. No information was released on a launch date or pricing.” It had gotten to the point that I immediately went to the bottom of any announcement of a tablet-device, and if it had the standard blurb about no launch date or word on pricing, I did not read the article.
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Giving battery life figures for any modern notebook will always be a difficult task due to the huge dynamic range of the mobile platforms used in notebooks today. Take the Samsung 900X1B I’m testing at the moment. It’s not an Ultrabook but it’s built on the same platform to the same dimensions and it will run at anything between 2.8W drain and over 10X that figure. In this article I’ll give you some results from some fairly detailed testing I completed today. In summary, the Samsung 900X1B has excellent battery life for the size, weight and battery capacity. It’s efficient.
The Samsung 900X1B runs on a Intel Core i3 2357M platform. It has a nominal 1.3Ghz clock speed but can speed-step down to 800Mhz. There’s an Intel HD3000 graphics unit, a video encode/decode unit and, of course, lots of busses, components and connectivity. There’s also a 11.6″ 1366×768 screen with a relatively powerful back-light. The battery capacity is 42Wh [I recently corrected our database which showed in incorrect 40Wh.]
The tests I did today were aimed at finding how low the platform can idle and what sort of drain you can expect some of the components to add, all the way up to maximum power usage.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was announced last month by Google and Samsung as the first phone to run the latest version of Android, 4.0 AKA Ice Cream Sandwich.
While we knew of the large (4.65″) high resolution (1280×720) Super AMOLED display, the 5MP camera, NFC, Bluetooth 3.0, and most of the other details, Samsung stayed oddly quite about any information regarding the CPU and GPU, giving us nothing more than “1.2GHz dual-core CPU”.
Thanks to the Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo, the beans have been spilled on the Galaxy Nexus’ CPU. The 1.2GHz dual-core CPU is indeed the Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 platform which also includes the PowerVR SGX540 GPU. TI claims that the PowerVR SGX540 has up to 2x better performance than the previous SGX530 GPU. OMAP 4460 also has support for 1080p encoding (capture) and decoding (playback) at 30 FPS. Samsung’s last Nexus phone, the Nexus S [review], didn’t even record 720p video. This time around, Samsung is taking full advantage of the platform’s capabilities.
You can see full official specifications at the Samsung Galaxy Nexus tracking page in our mobile device database.
Samsung UK has confirmed Galaxy Nexus availability for November 17th, but it seems that retailers aren’t so sure about that. Amazon UK has moved the shipping date for the Galaxy Nexus from the 17th of November back to December 2nd. Amazon UK currently lists the 16GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus unlocked for £519.99, which converts to a pricey $837 USD.
Most phones in the US aren’t bought off-contract, so when it comes to typical US pricing, Android Central has shown what appears to be a leaked Costco inventory screen which prices the Samsung Galaxy Nexus at $289. The phone is expected to be available across both AT&T and Verizon in HSPA+ and LTE flavors, respectively.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus has taken us on a serious roller coaster ride. A permutation of the device was announced almost a full year ago at CES 2011. This improved 4G-equipped Galaxy Tab 7 doesn’t seem like it will ever make it to market, but from its ashes rose the device that we now know as the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus. Instead of a small bump in processor speed, an improved camera, and 4G LTE, Samsung ended up slapping in a dual-core CPU, Honeycomb 3.2 with Touch-Wiz, Bluetooth 3.0, and an IR blaster.
The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus starts at $399 for 16GB of storage, and naturally jumps to $499 for a 32GB version. You can actually buy the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus as of today from Amazon. Samsung has an official product page for the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, but it doesn’t seem to have the device for direct sale just yet. It seems that Samsung is positioning the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus as an economy version of the anticipated Galaxy Tab 7.7.
Whatever the case, there are a lot of happy original Galaxy Tab 7 owners that I know will be happy to trade up to the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus for the Honeycomb and processor improvements. As a bonus, the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus is only one of two Android tablets on the market that include an IR blaster which allows the tablet to be used as a smart remote. This also isn’t just new components stuffed into an old box. The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus has a redesigned chassis that’s thinner and more curvy than the original.
CNET has a detailed review of the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus that’s well worth a read. I’ll give you their synopsis, but please, go visit their full review if you’re interested in the Tab 7 Plus:
The good: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has a sleek design, a high-quality screen, and well-integrated smart remote-control functionality through the Peel app.
The bad: Peel [the remote app] has limited usefulness if you don’t have cable or satellite, and the tablet’s screen brightness is comparatively low.
The bottom line: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is pretty and sleek, with well-implemented remote-control functionality, making it the best 7-inch Honeycomb tablet yet.
Yes, that’s right, they’re calling it the best 7″ Honeycomb tablet yet. That statement may change once the Galaxy Tab 7.7 hits the market, but for the time being, it sounds like they were quite impressed. Still, there is concern with Honeycomb — the reviewer experienced “freezing, crashing, and hanging frequently in multiple apps”. Unfortunately, this seems to be the state of Honeycomb at the moment; this isn’t an isolated incident.
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