samsung

Here in the tropics of Singapore where it's perpetually summer, air conditioners are big business all year long. We're happy campers as long as they just do their job, but Samsung is on a crusade to improve our health as well with two new bacteria-killing models.

Using Samsung's proprietary Micro Plasma Ion technology, the Vivace Shadow Mirror pictured here and Neo-Forte pack enough firepower to zap all manner of germs. According to company representatives, MPI is capable of effectively eliminating 78 percent of fungus and 58 percent of bacteria in a 30-minute time frame, within an enclosed … Read more

Crave tends to cringe when a fashion house teams up with a consumer electronics manufacturer, as it usually means some abomination is about to be exposed that offends both style freaks and geeks alike. The idea of a Samsung Armani phone was no exception.

But it hit the Crave doormat this morning, and our fear was replaced with a sigh of relief as we unboxed a rather lovely looking handset. It's small, it's solid, and most importantly, it's not garish. The Armani logo is subtle and the casing comes in a stylish Italian-footwear brown. Better yet, the … Read more

Talk--or speculation in this case--is cheap, but it's a starting point. Only Apple knows what form the next MacBook Air will take but big hints are out there already.

Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer Montevina mobile processors are strong candidates for the first refresh of the Air. Currently, the Air uses special 1.6- and 1.8-GHz "Merom" (65-nanometer) processors that use extra-small 22mm sq. packaging (see accompanying graphic) to yield a Thermal Design Power (TDP or thermal envelope) of 20 watts.

This class of small form factor (SFF) processors will also be part of the "Penryn&… Read more

Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers.

SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the … Read more

Good news for Sprint business customers who want a world-roaming smartphone but don't want the RIM BlackBerry 8830 World Edition. Today, the carrier introduced the Samsung Ace, a Samsung BlackJack lookalike, that offers dual-mode CDMA/GSM functionality so you can use your smartphone internationally. This means that the Ace will use Sprint's CDMA network for all domestic calls, and then you can use the included SIM card to make calls on GSM networks abroad. In addition, the SIM is unlocked so you're not restricted to the one packaged with the smartphone. That means travelers can buy a … Read more

Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing 64GB solid state drives (SSDs) with a new high-performance interface and will begin shipping the drive to major notebook PC suppliers, the company announced Friday. This follows last month's announcement of plans to bring out a 128GB SSD.

The new Serial ATA (SATA)-II SSD is able to read data at 100 megabytes per second (MB/sec) and write it at 80MB/sec, 60 percent faster than SATA I drives, Samsung said.

Dell will be one of the first takers. "Today, I wanted to let our customers know that in the coming … Read more

Just to tease myself I stepped into the Vodafone pavilion at the GSMA World Congress. I knew I'd come out with pangs of jealousy, but it's important to see what the rest of the world's carriers are up to. The pavilion is certainly impressive enough by itself. Set out in a plaza between two show buildings, it's a two-story, glass-walled affair. Inside there's the usual reception desk and meeting areas, but there's also a wall of phones that Vodafone carries. Though quite a of the few handsets were no different from what we get … Read more

Samsung gave us a lot of look at the GSMA World Congress and we've rolled them up here in a Samsung slide show. The company unveiled a long list of handsets, with the star attraction being the new Samsung Soul. As the company's "flagship product" for 2008, the Soul offers a sleek slider design (not that Samsung gives us much else these days) and a unique navigation touchpad with icons that change depending on the feature you're using. We gave it a test run, and it seemed to work pretty well, though a thorough shakedown … Read more

Phone madness continues on in Barcelona, Spain, as the second day of GSMA Mobile World Congress comes to a close. Vodafone's CEO said he sees the mobile web as the future, Microsoft announced MSN Direct availability on Windows Mobile devices, and Yahoo launches OneConnect, a new tool that lets mobile phone users to aggregate their social-networking updates and messaging in one spot on their phones. T-Mobile also finally announces plans to launch 3G in the U.S. by summer 2008. There's also hope for an Android phone, as well as an Austrian version of the iPhone by the … Read more