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Samsung LN46A750 46-inch 1080p for $1,455 shipped
LG ships 100 million handsets in 2008
The first numbers for 2008 are out and it appears that LG had a very good year. According to the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, LG sold 100 million handsets last year, boosting it to third place worldwide and barely bumping Motorola to fourth place.
Nokia, of course, was the top dog. Preliminary numbers show that the Finnish giant sold 470 million handsets in 2008, putting it far ahead of Samsung, which claimed the number two spot with 200 million handset sold. Nokia shows no sign of losing its No. 1 status, even though Samsung pumps phones out nonstop.
Motorola, … Read more
Instinct's calendar syncing put to the test
I know that it's been a while, but I did promise you last month that I would report back on my experience with the Samsung Instinct's new calendar syncing ability. I apologize for the wait, but the holidays and CES prevented me from getting an activated Instinct handset from Sprint.
Fortunately, the wait proved to be the worst thing about the experience as the new feature worked pretty much as promised. Once a review model arrived, I had to download three software updates, which took about 20 minutes, but they loaded without incident or a missed connection.
After installing the updates and syncing the phone with my CNET OWA (Outlook Web Access) e-mail, a new "work calendar" update button appeared under the calendar menu. Pressing that button synced the Instinct and my Outlook calendar in just a few seconds. The data connection cut out on my first try, but the second attempt brought success. All of my current appointments then appeared under their appropriate day with the correct time, location, and description. To get back to the calendar from the main menu, I could choose either the calendar or e-mail icons.
As Sprint promised, I was able to create a new appointment on the Instinct, which then synced back to my PC automatically. Also, I could get meeting reminders, accept or decline new appointments, and edit or delete current meetings right on the phone. Any edits made on the Instinct synced back to my PC in just a few seconds; the reverse process took a bit longer. Yet, it was a satisfying experience on the whole.
Still, there were a few quirks.… Read more
Report: Samsung Electronics restructures
Samsung Electronics is reconfiguring four divisions into two, in a move to bring its consumer products under one roof and its components business under another, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal
The electronics giant will house such areas as its TVs, cell phones, and other consumer electronics into one group, while the components division will now include its liquid crystal displays and semiconductors, according to the report.
Samsung's restructuring comes at a time when a number of companies are retooling their operations in an effort to minimize the effect of a slowdown in corporate IT spending … Read more
Get your pink Instinct
Though pink phones are so five minutes ago, Samsung and Sprint decided to roll out a pink Instinct this week. Features are no different from the standard version, and the $99 price tag is unchanged as well. And that's all we have to say about that.
Buyer beware: Solid-state drive prices vary--a lot
Updated at 9:40 a.m. PST with additional information about SLC-based solid-state drives.
Some solid-state drives are more equal than others--or, to put it another way, command higher prices than rival drives, despite being seemingly quite similar.
SanDisk and Toshiba offer a good lesson. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, SanDisk said it would start shipping 240GB SSDs in "mid 2009," priced at only $499. (Next to a comparable hard-disk drive, that may be a lot of money, but for a solid-state drive, it's dirt cheap.)
At the Toshiba booth, however, the story was very different. A Toshiba representative said his company's comparable 256GB SSDs are priced at $800. And this discrepancy is coming from two companies that get their flash chips from the same source: a joint-manufacturing operation in Japan.
Below are the prices Toshiba representatives were stating on the show floor versus prices that SanDisk announced.
Toshiba/SanDisk solid-state drive pricing:
Toshiba 512GB: $1,600, SanDisk N/A Toshiba 256GB: $800, SanDisk 240GB: $499 Toshiba 128GB: $400, SanDisk 120GB: $249 Toshiba 64GB: $175, SanDisk 60GB: $149Throw Intel into the mix, and it gets more confusing. "Introductory" pricing for Intel 160GB versions of its X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA (SATA) solid-state drive is $945 for less than 1,000 units. … Read more
Vann's has the Samsung LN19A650 LCD HDTV for $399.97, after $50 savings, plus free shipping.
Samsung BD-P2500 gets firmware fix for DTS-HD Master Audio
While the rest of tech world was busy scouring news from CES 2009, Samsung's duo of Netflix-enabled Blu-ray players--the BD-P2500 and BD-P2550--received a firmware update to enable onboard DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. The players were promised the update "by the end of the year", but chalk it up to another delayed Samsung firmware release, as we've seen before.
The firmware is available for download from Samsung's site, and the players can be updated via a direct download using an Ethernet connection, or, for players not connected to home networks, users can download the file to … Read more
