VIEWPOINT: HWM was fortunate enough to be at the 50th IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin, Germany. The show itself, which runs from 3-7 September, is one of the biggest CE fairs in the world and is often compared with CES and Computex.

One of the highlights of the show is the launch of the Galaxy Tab “smart media device” by Samsung in a special media conference in Berlin on 2 September. HWM managed to record the media Q&A session with key execs from Samsung with regards to the Galaxy Tab. This video was made on September 3.

Mr. Teo Chee Hean (3rd from left), President of Singapore National Olympic Council, Deputy PM & Minister for Defence of Singapore, gamely poses with the Samsung Omnia Lite with Mr. Gregory Lee (fourth from left), President and CEO of Samsung Asia & senior executives from the Singapore Youth Olympic Council and Samsung South-east Asia.

CORP TALK: The world’s first Youth Olympic Games will be held in Singapore from 14-26 August 2010. Over 5,000 athletes, aged between 14-18 years old, and officials from 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) will be competing in 26 sports and take part in a Culture and Education Program (CEP).

As part of its commitment as the Worldwide Partner for the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, Samsung Electronics will provide over 5,000 sets of Samsung Omnia Lite (B7300) mobile phones to athletes and key team officials.

These smart phones come preloaded with the “Digital Concierge for Singapore 2010″ app that will allow users to access Singapore 2010-related content and services anytime, anywhere.

The app lets them obtain personalized schedules on competition events and map content. They can also find out the latest sport results and get updates on the CEP activities. It’ll also come with fun, interactive mobile services for one-stop mobile social networking functionality.

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.

While AMOLEDs have been used on mobile phones, Samsung showed a flexible prototype at a conference this week.

T&A: Looks like the interest in flexible displays has picked up a notch. Oled-Display.net released news of Samsung showing a 6.5-inch flexible AMOLED display prototype at Display Week 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. The event is organized by the Society for Information Display (SID). Unlike common AMOLED displays seen on mobile devices, this one’s flexible like paper.

The prototype used new process technology that does not require low temperatures to be produced. The best part is that this new process now makes it more cost-effective than other competing prototypes.

The flexible AMOLED has humongous potential of course, where it can be used as electronic paper, newspaper and so on. The response time for the prototype is more than 1000 times faster than a standard LCD panel. Oled-Display.net also has a link detailing what exactly makes up an AMOLED and AMOLED-based devices already out in the market.

SHOWCASE: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced the launch of two new full touch screen mobiles — the S5600 and S5230.

The Samsung S5600 has a 2.8-inch touch screen with 7.2Mbps HSDPA support, TouchWiz UI, a 3-megapixel camera and 80MB memory.

At only 11.9mm thin, the Samsung S5230 has a 3-inch WQVGA screen and 50MB of internal memory.

The S5600 is a 2.8-inch QVGA full touch screen phone with the TouchWiz User Interface. With it, mobile widgets can be dragged and placed on the screen for one-click access. The accelerometer sensor within makes it easier when surfing via its HSDPA 7.2Mbps connectivity. 

There’s also the ‘Gesture Lock’ feature, where users can unlock the phone and execute the menu directly by drawing an alphabet letter on the screen. The S5600 comes with 80MB memory, microSD slot, 3-megapixel camera (with smile shot), music recognition feature and multi codec support (H.263, MPEG4, WMV). (more…)