CeBit bits [technology/non SE]
As I wrote sometime ago, his year I was
fortunate enough to go to CeBit. I covered it as good as I could and
along with that, some things I saw went uncovered cause there was so
much to see and so little time.
So here they are:
-
Samsung Soul-the new Ultra Editions
Samsung slim trendy phone was launched at CeBit. Slide design, shiny
metallic body, 12.9 mm slim, 2.2 inches, 16 million colors bright
screen, HSDPA, e-mail client, Bluetooth, and a Magic Touch
interface. Other than that, it is also a multimedia phone, with FM
radio and a 5 MP camera with face detection and image stabilization.
SD card is supported.What it does, it has a touchable square
underneath the screen as a menu. It will vibrate as son as it
executes the command you issued. Nothing new from this point of view
if you used a touch screen phone before. The menu was fast enough
but not very logical.
-
Samsung Q1 Ultra-I’ve read various
reports about this gadget. It’s Samsung’s second attempt to
establish a line of mobile/ tablet pc and be successful. The first
time they’ve failed. But this time around they seem confident
enough. A lot of people were curious at Samsung’s stand to try the
Q1. I looked around and all seats were taken, all Q 1s were put to
work on various sites. -
The apparatus itself moves very
quickly. It should if you look at the specs: -
-Processor Intel® Ultra Mobile
Processor A110 800MHz Clock 512Kb L2 Cache/400MHz FSB -
System Memory 1GB DDR2 400MHz
Memory / Slot 2-in-1 Memory Slot (SD/MMC -
It runs Vista Home and I thought
this will slow it down but it didn’t. It responded quickly to any
command, it ran instantly all the programs installed and having a
broadband at my disposal moved around Internet very quick also. My
test unit had a keyboard attached, so I had no trouble with handling
the unit.
The story changed when I tried to use
he unit without the attached keyboard. I’ve been using pcs, laptops
and various smart phones for more than 10 years now but I gotta admit
this one put me off. It was IMPOSSIBLE to use it, to write sitting
down without putting the Q1 in my lap or on he table. It’s not a
gadget to use on the move. The keypad layout looks smart, it has a
“thumb-mouse” if can call it like this but I couldn’t hold the
tablet and write at the same time. Then why would use this on the
move if I can’t handle it easily?
Of course, from what I’ve heard there
were a lot of improvements if you compare it with the first model:
the battery runs for almost 9 hours, the keyboard control is improved
(the first model only had a virtual keyboard on the screen) and the
screen has a new resolution of 1024×800. Another strong point is
connectivity: HSDPA, Wibro, WiFi, Bluetooth. Not always free but a
lot of ways to achieve Internet connection.This is a very good review, it was
taken from Samsung’s site – I read it and it seems to me a bit like
propaganda. But still, a full review.
-
The Pocket Surfer-a very nice
gadget launched at CeBit and aimed at using Internet wherever you
are. The gadget itself is made by Hagenuk www.hagenuk.de which was a leader on the mobile market more than 10 years ago.
Now all it produces is cordless phones, answering machines and
occasionally, it does OEM products for others, like this Wind
company. It comes bundled with a year of “free” Internet. Of
course, “free” came along with some conditions: 30 hours of
Internet/monthly for 12 months. If you need more, you can get
another 30 or 50 hours for as “low” as 20 Euro. Of course, you
have to take into account that you have Internet on the move and
that’ still expensive. It’s country/network dependant. The price for
the device starts at 250 Dollars, while in Germany it was 250 Euro.
The keyboard felt like Motorola
Razr and without a doubt, it shares the same technology.The screen, TFT, while very large
looked extremely washed. The colors were dull, whitish and the
browser couldn’t arrange the whole page – you had to pull the bars
from left to right to read the whole page. It’s because the screen
was only VGA while the site was 1024×768.Quite light and very well made.Only GPRS and EDGE, so big chunks
of data will probably take longer to load.
I couldn’t notice how focused was
the salesman on closing the sale and that’s all. As soon as he
realized I wasn’t gonna buy one (probably it took him a whole 2
minutes!) he moved away from offering information. He then excused
himself and left me a leaflet with the product. While I can admire
the sales skill, I don’t agree with this heartless approach: a sales
person is also a counseling party. It’s not all about money, money,
money.
All in all, I can have better
Internet, faster internet on a better device ( laptop/tablet pc with
WiFi) at cheaper prices. Also, my P1i does the job better ( 3G
speeds) and much cheaper – no phone function on the Hagenuk, only
data.
http://www.datawind.com/html/specification.html
* Philips with Ambilight
* Surveillance cameras get smarter and
smarter. You have VGA quality, hundreds of hours of recording very
well compressed and face recognition.
Among all kinds of gadgets, I’ve seen
a lot of people doing big business on CeBit. This shows that people are
interested in gadgets, in new and cheaper services.






