Having given us the Serene, Bang & Olufsen and Samsung perform another amazing duet to give us the Serenata a uniquely designed music player and mobile phone. The device uses a simple scroll wheel interface to select your favourite tunes and to make calls to your friends to let them know you’ve paid out for one of these babies. The Serenata plays nicely with both PCs and Macs via USB and will talk to iTunes with some software available at the B&O website. The unit has a built in speaker so is a mini music system in its own right and for more private moments the unit comes with the ergonomic EarSet 3 which fit ’so snug, you’ll hear notes which would otherwise never make it to your ear’. To make calls and send messages the Serenata has a ’sensi-touch display’ and the scroll wheel will navigate you through menus and messages.

The phone sports GSM 900, 1800, 1900 and WCDMA 2100 and has a 3 hour talk time and 280 hours on standby. The display is a square 2.26 inch 240 x 240 res and bluetooth connectivity is available for a headset etc. On the tunes side of the spec there’s 4 GB of memory, 5 hours of speaker playback, 13 hours on headset and the unit supports mp3, wma and the rare wma lossless format.

The styling is well, what you’d expect from Bang & Olufsen and so unfortunately is the price rocking in at around US$2000. So for all its flash looks and great sound quality I don’t think these will be selling like hot cakes more like stylish, fashionable cakes. Check it out and listen to some mellow tunes at the Serenata website.

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I thought I’d take a peek at the Samsung YP-P2, their latest offering in the touch screen media player arena. This little sucker is already available for pre-order over at Amazon. Here are some specs for you to inwardly digest

* 8 GB flash memory
* Bluetooth connectivity for speakers and headphones
* Widescreen 3 inch 428 x 240 res display
* 30 hours of tunes or 5 hours of vid from a fully charged battery
* FM radio
* Touch screen functionality
* Weight 2.8 oz

Sounds good? Well at US$250 it does sound like a bargain. But lets see how it stacks up against other well known models in the PMP market.

For an extra $50 you can grab an 8 GB iPod Touch which has a larger screen at 3.5 inches with 480 x 320 res but does weigh more at 4.2 oz. The iPod also only boasts a mere 22 hours of audio with a full battery but it does support Wi-fi connectivity.

The 8 GB iRiver X20 is floating around for $330 and of course has a microSD slot to increase its capacity so it may be a bit unfair to line it up against the others but here goes anyway! Its screen is a bit on the small size at 2.2 inches and is only slightly lighter than the Samsung at 2.5 oz so an extra $80 seems a bit much to pay for expandability.

So the Samsung doesn’t look too bad compared to the Apple and iRiver offerings, what do you think, or even better if there are any users of any of these models feel free to drop me a line with your thoughts!

Source: enGadget

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Looks like Samsung have decided that the lucky Europeans will be the first to get their mits on the Samsung SGH-F700. This little baby certainly looks the part with its sleek rounded-corner look and its snazzy QWERTY slider keypad. I was unable to find an actual retail price for this sucker but I can’t imagine you being able to buy one with the change in your pocket. Anyway here’s a look at some numbers that I did manage to find

* GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA at 1.8 Mbps with 3G support
* 112 x 56 x 16 mm
* 432 x 240 res, 3.2 inch display
* 5 MP camera
* Support for MPEG4, MP3, AAC media formats
* microSD memory
* slide-out QWERTY key pad
* USB and Bluetooth connectivity

Not a bad spec overall, but there’s no Wi-fi connectivity and the microSD will limit the number of tunes and vids you can squeeze into this sucker. So hopefully the price will reflect these issues, anyway to the European readers out there, enjoy!

Source: AkihabaraNews

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Samsung have announced that their 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) has been snapped up by Alienware and Dell and is now available in the manufacturers notebooks. Dell is offering the drive on its XPS M1330 ultra-portable notebook and Alienware have got dual SSDs tucked away in its Area-51 m9750 gaming notebook along side a spinning 200 GB oh-so-yesterday HDD.

Despite only having a 64 GB max capacity - that figure will, as with all figures techie, increase over time - SSD does boast a number of advantages over its older sibling the HDD

* No moving parts, so less bits to go wrong
* Noise free
* Produces little heat, always a bonus with a lap-burning laptop
* Handles shocks and knocks better

So hats off to Samsung for getting this little sucker out into the world, another step forward in the endless quest to squeeze more stuff into less space.

Source: BusinessWire

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One way to avoid the format wars involving HD DVD and Blu-ray is to opt for the Samsung BD-UP5000, a dual format player. Samsung have just announced that the ‘neutral’ player will be available in October this year and will cost around 550 Euros (US$750), not a bad price to have the best of both worlds. According to the blurb from Samsung back in April

Samsung’s Duo HD player (BD-UP5000) will fully support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats and their interactive technologies, HDi and BD-Java. With the Duo HD consumers can enjoy additional studio content such as trailers, director’s comments, more elaborate interactive menus and behind the scene footage. The new Duo HD joins Samsung’s next generation DVD line-up which includes Samsung’s second generation Blu-ray player available at retail this month. Together, these two models offer the consumer a strong line of High-Definition players to match Samsung’s award winning, and best selling, line of HDTVs.

The price stacks up well against the competition with the LG BH1000 rocking in at US$1200. So for all the people who enjoy sitting on the fence this could just be the player you’ve been waiting for.

Source: Pocket-lint

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