Archive for March, 2008

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