Popular Thai actress, Chompoo, has been selected as the product ambassador of Samsung's latest range of cameras, exclusively for the Thai market.

SHOWCASE: HardwareZone.com Singapore attended Samsung’s regional camera launch in Bangkok, Thailand recently. There, the company unveiled three new cameras, two of which are the Samsung ST550 and ST500 compact digital cameras.

Both feature an additional LCD screen on the front of the camera. This screen allows users to snap self portraits for social media posts or when travelling alone.

The secondary screen also doubles up as a numeric countdown for timer shots, with additional features like Samsung’s Smart Gesture User Interface and built-in Gravity Sensor.

This means photographers can tilt or hand gesture to quickly access the camera functions. The LCD touch screen uses Samsung’s haptic technology, providing slight vibration whenever an option is selected on-screen.

Both the ST550 and ST500 will be available by end-August. They’re identical except that the ST550 comes with a 1,152K pixel resolution 3.5″ touch-screen while the ST500 has a smaller 3.0″ 230K pixel resolution screen.

The third camera launched is the ST1000, which has a built-in GPS for you to geo-tag your photos. It also comes with Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi and DLNA compatibility. The ST1000 features only a single 3.5″ wide 1,152K display.

Here are some photos taken from the launch event.

SHOWCASE: Sanyo unveiled six new camcorders in their Xacti line-up - three vertical hand-held models and three horizontal ones, which is a new (and bold departure) for the company. Similar launches were held in Dubai, Munich, Toronto, London, New York, and Osaka (besides Bangkok).

When queried about how business would change with Panasonic’s acquisition of Sanyo, Mr. Yoshinori Nakatani, CRO and Vice President of Sanyo, revealed that Sanyo would maintain its unique business identity, brand and listing of stock. He further elaborated that approximately US$100 million worth of financial support would be put up for future plant and equipment investments and R&D.

Nakatani-san shared that Sanyo’s strategy for digital camera products was to shift from low-end digital cameras to high-value added ‘Dual Cameras’, thus explaining the branding behind the new Xacti Dual Camera line-up.

The six new camcorders fall into one of three categories with two models per category: Full HD, Compact HD and Waterproof HD.  

Check out our Showcase Gallery after the jump: (more…)