Lenovo S800 Phone to be First with Transparent Display

The Lenovo S800 transparent phone is the first to have a transparent color display. Dialog Semiconductor (maker of the S800′s PMOLED IC driver) has comments from it’s CEO Jalal Bagherli saying, “Lenovo has a well founded reputation for implementing cutting edge technologies, and I have no doubt the S800 handset will exceed consumer expectations…”

Certainly transparent displays will become the new “cool” trend for phones. But will the trend last? If you’re one of the first to get your hands on a transparent display phone, expect to turn a few heads!

The S800 debuted last November, and Lenovo has said that it was only a concept phone at the time. No release date has been announced yet. However, it’s clear (no pun intended) that the development of the phone continues to spread among mobile phone enthusiasts.

Blackberry Bold 9900 hits T-Mobile later this year

It’s going to be a big week for BlackBerry with BlackBerry World taking place in Orlando, Florida, and we’re already off to some big news. The new Bold 9900, which is reminiscent of the Bold 9000 that came out in fall 2008, was just announced this morning and we’ve learned that it’s going to come to T-Mobile. The new smartphone from RIM will feature NFC capabilities, augmented reality apps and support, HD video and it will one of be the first BlackBerry OS 7 devices, too. Oh, and it will be 4G HSPA+ capable!

This is great news for T-Mobile users, and BlackBerry users in general, as the carrier’s already impressive smartphone line-up continues to grow. With sexy devices like these in the pipeline, it’s almost easy to forget that the fourth largest carrier as we know it may cease to exist a year from now if the U.S. government approves AT&T’s deal with Deutsche Telekom.

There isn’t a whole lot more to this story, but be sure to stay tuned this week as we bring you more news and coverage from BB World in Orlando!

Olympus LS-20M Pocket Camcorder Overview

Olympus has officialy announced their new pocket camcorder, called Olympus LS-20M pocket camcorder. The LS-20M camcorderOlympus recorder is the first that captures and edits 1080p HD video and provides excellent audio with allows users to recording studio sound quality in Linear PCM (WAV files) and MP3 formats, New Olympus LS-20M will be available to the market in June 2011 with estimated street price of $299.99.

Features:

The new Olympus LS-20M pocket camcorder will be capable to capture full HD movie recording at 1920 x 1080 (30fps) with image stabilizer and records 24 bit / 96 mHz Linear PCM audio paired with dual condenser microphones, so you can upload your own video to social network video site, like YouTube or Facebook. You can also start and stop recording without touching the LS-20M camcorder by use a wireless remote and also support voice-activation feature automatically starts a recording when a certain level of sound is reached.

Olympus LS-20M also support four Magic Movie settings i.e., Rock to create your own rock video with the classic Rock Magic Movie setting, Sketch for setting turns your video into a living and breathing pencil drawing, reminiscent of some popular 80’s videos, Pop Magic Movie setting super-saturates colors to create a brighter, more vivid video recording and Pinhole Magic Movie setting allows users to record video with soft, darkened outside edges – enhancing the subject in the center of the video.

Specifications:

The LS-20M pocket camcorder designed with durable black and silver body with weighs just 5.4 ounces and measures in 5.3 x2.5 x 0.7 inch (134.7 x 62.8 x 18.2 mm). Olympus LS-20M pocket camcorder also boast 2-inch color LCD screen, SD/SDHC card slot up to 2 GB, 1/4 inch CMOS sensor with 5.32 megapixel with 4.1mm auto focus lens and 4x digital zoom, 16mm round dynamic speaker (270mW), Two condenser microphones, an HDMI, USB output and a 1.46-inch LCD data screen that displays time, audio levels and battery life.

HTC 7 Pro Windows Phone 7

HTC has finally launched its first QWERTY windows phone, HTC 7 PRO in the American market. This smartphone is 16mm thick and sports a nice 3.8 inch WVGA display (800 x 480). But the real selling point of this smartphone is its slide out QWERTY backlit keyboard. the keys are illuminated so that you can type in the dark easily. This forces to use the FN + 2 combo to input that character.

The phone runs the latest version of Microsoft Windows Phone operating system. The software allows you to access programs directly from the home screen via tiles. These tiles are live in nature and show dynamic information such as missed calls and unread messages. Metro UI is amazing and sits somewhere in between Android and iOS operating system. The animations and window transitions are smooth as silk. 

While it produces great pictures in daylight, images taken in low light conditions produce a lot of noise. Colors tend to be pretty accurate though and some images do tend to develop a blue tinge. The built quality is exceptional and its keyboard is easy to use.

Full Specification:

• Chassis 1 phone – so no QWERTY keyboard as suggested before
• 1GHz Qualcomm QSD 8250 Processor
• 512MB ROM and 576MB of RAM
• 8GB non-removable microSD
• 3.8-inch 480 x 800 WVGA capacitive touchscreen TFT LCD with multitouch
• HSPA/UMTS and GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• HSPA/UMTS dual band: 900/2100MHz
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
• Up to 7.2MBps HSDPA
• Up to 2MBps HSUPA
• Global roaming
• GPS
• A-GPS
• Digital Compass
• Motion G-sensor
• Proximity sensor
• Ambient Light Sensor
• FM Radio
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• microUSB support
• USB 2.0
• 3.5mm headset jack
• 1,300mAh battery
• Dedicated Buttons: Power button, Volume Up/Volume Down buttons, Start button, Back button, Search and camera button
• Support for various accessories, apps and widgets

Launcher 7 Application, Turn Android Phone to Windows Phone 7

For those of you who want to change your Android smartphone appearance become a WP7 taste, may be you should you try this exciting application.

This Application is called Launcher 7. In addition to make your Android feel like Windows smartphone, this application is also easy to use.

As quoted from pocketnow, said that the application is available in two versions, a free version with the ads that are contained in the list of applications and the ‘donate’ versions which no advertisements in it. This application is also already available in the Android Market.

Want to know more about how these applications works, see the video below:

Samsung SENS RF712 3D Laptop Review

The 3D rage is still going strong and may not be cooling off any time soon. There are now a lot of devices that feature 3D technology as its main selling point. This has even spilled to various laptops and notebooks that now feature 3D technology. One of the recent ones to come out is the new Samsung SENS RF712 3D notebook.

Samsung Sens RF712 Specifications and Features

• 17.3 inch Full HD Super Bright Plus display with 400nits of brightness
• Intel Quad-Core Processor
• AMD HD6650M Graphics with 2GB
• 750GB Hard Drive
• 2D and 3D Conversion
• Blu-ray Drive
• USB 3.0
• SRS Labs 3D Sound
• Fast Start technology to start machine quickly
• PowerPlus technology to extend battery life by 3 times

Availability of Samsung Sens RF712 notebook is start May 2nd, 2011 and will sell for price of 2,600,000 won (about $2400).

Honeycomb Tablet Has 4G and 3-D - New Android Contender

For the many companies designing tablets based on Google's Android operating system to compete with Apple's dominant iPad, there are twin challenges. The obvious one is to convince consumers to buy something other than the iPad 2. It's the G-Slate, built by Korean electronics giant LG and sold by T-Mobile.

The G-Slate uses Google's standard Honeycomb software—the version of Android especially created for tablets—and is the first Honeycomb tablet in the U.S. to offer 4G cellular data speeds and 3-D video Hp dv2000 battery creation and viewing. It sports a screen size—8.9 inches—that falls between the 10-inch dimension of the iPad and the Motorola Xoom, and the 7-inch dimension used by the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Research in Motion PlayBook.

I've been testing the G-Slate, and in my view, it performs pretty well overall—about as well as the first Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom. The 3-D feature, which requires the use of 1950s-style colored glasses, seems like a parlor trick to me. One reason for the iPad juggernaut is that the base, Wi-Fi-only, 16-gigabyte model costs just $499.

If you buy the G-Slate without a phone contract, it costs $750. The comparable iPad 2, with the same 32 gigabytes of memory offered by the G-Slate, both Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, plus its bigger screen, is $729.

The least you can pay for the G-Slate is $530. But that price requires a two-year cellular data contract at a minimum of $30 a month, which boosts the total cost to $1,250. The iPad 2 isn't sold with a contract and doesn't require a mail-in rebate.

Another drawback to the G-Slate, and to all other Honeycomb tablets so far, is a paucity of tablet-optimized third-party apps. Apple claims 65,000 tablet apps.

This isn't to say the G-Slate has no pluses. I continue to believe that Honeycomb removes many of the rough edges and extra steps that characterize the phone versions of Android. The Honeycomb browser, unlike the iPad's, has tabs, like a PC browser.

Also, unlike the iPad Toshiba pa3465u-1brs battery , the G-Slate can handle Flash video, though not in every case I tried. It comes with a free hot-spot feature, which allows it to create a Wi-Fi signal that can power other devices, like laptops.

Its front and rear cameras are much better for still photos than the iPad's. It has stereo speakers, which the iPad 2 lacks, and another feature missing on Apple's tablet—a built-in port, called HDMI, for connection to high-definition TVs.

In my tests, with Wi-Fi turned off, the G-Slate averaged 5.79 megabits per second for downloads and 1.28 mbps for uploads. By comparison, an iPad 2 with Verizon 3G built in managed only about a fourth, or less, of those speeds over its cellular network.

The G-Slate generally performed smoothly and speedily in my tests, and handled well every app I tested. Video was smooth and vivid, though audio seemed a bit tinny and soft, despite the stereo speakers.

I like the idea of the 8.9-inch screen, which made one-handed operation easier than on a 10-inch tablet. But the G-Slate was clumsy to use in portrait mode because it is long and skinny. It's about 20% narrower than the iPad 2, but is actually a tiny bit longer, making for an odd shape.

T-Mobile and LG listed different, and inaccurate, weight specifications for the device on their websites and press materials. The heaviest iPad 2 is 1.35 pounds.

In my tablet battery HP pavilion dv6000 battery  test, where I play videos continuously with the wireless features turned on and the screen brightness at about 75%, the G-Slate lasted 7 hours and 39 minutes. That's much less than the 10 hours and 9 minutes the iPad 2 delivered in the same test. T-Mobile claims 9 hours of continuous "mixed use" of various functions. I couldn't replicate this vague type of test, but found that in light, intermittent, mixed use, the G-Slate lasted a couple of days between charges, though its screen was off much of that time.

Emailing the videos to a standard computer didn't preserve the 3-D effect, even with the glasses on. T-Mobile says a 3-D TV can display the 3-D videos, but I wasn't able to test this. Because of the glasses and the sharing limitations, I feel that this 3-D feature is mostly a marketing tool.

Bottom line: The G-Slate isn't as good a tablet as the iPad 2. I'd only recommend it for people who want the higher cellular speeds, or who prefer Android.