We just got done talking to Sprint about their latest (and some would say best) music phone, the Samsung Upstage. Here are some previously unreleased details that may have not been found here (or anywhere else).

• It’s cheap: Only $149 with contract. That’s way low for a music phone with this kind of featureset.

• Unfortunately, the Upstage won’t play any other form of DRM (the songs from Sprint aren’t DRMEd, actually, which is nice). So your iTunes, Zune, Napster, and other form of DRMed music won’t be able to be played on this.

• It comes with 64MB built-in memory, but will accept 1 and 2GB flash cards.

Jump for some more bullets, and a shocker!

• The Upstage will not be able to use music you’ve downloaded from their 1.4 million track repository for MP3 ringtones. In fact, from what Sprint said, you can’t use MP3 ringtones at all. Ouch. We blame the RIAA for this inability to use music as a ringtone in a music phone.

• You can download tracks both over the air (OTA) or on your PC, and the service will remember which tracks you’ve downloaded.

• The OTA versions are more compressed than the ones from the PC—which has standard MP3 compression—so if you wanted to, you could download a higher quality version of the song later for free (see above bullet).

• You can use the phone in USB Disk mode along with their own proprietary music manager service.

• Head to sprint.com/upstage to sign up for their 4/1 launch.

And finally, when we asked Sprint how this compares to the upcoming Phone (since they are both music-centric phones), Sprint gave us four ways in which they’re different. Here they are, in bullet point form.

• It’s much cheaper. $149 vs. $499

• It’s smaller.

• It has OTA music downloads.

• The touchscreen feature on the iPhone will be hard to use for the majority of users.

Vincent over at Slashgear has a large hands-on with the Samsung F700 sliding smartphone. Vincent commented that the phones keypad was pretty good, and the feedback to it was outstanding as a whole. The OS he recieved was locked though.

As for the finish, it’s definitely glossy and sexy. It has the same look and feel as the back of an iPod. It looks like it absorbs body oil, looking like a 15 year old prom date.

SlashGear at CeBIT: Samsung F700 Hands-on [Slashgear]

The Samsung A707 is feeling the Valentines Day spirit and getting a new paint job. There is nothing like a clam shell cherry red to make you think of love in the chilly February air. The specs remain the same—2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, lots of different audio file format support, etc.—as does the price ($50 with two-year contract). So go out and tell your significant other, “I can’t live without you, or I don’t trust you enough out so here is a phone so I can make sure your not cheating”, and buy the valentines Samsung
Source - Gizmodo

Samsung has really outdone it’s self with the Ultra Edition 5.9. At a whopping .23 of an inch thick, you may not even realize you have this in your pocket. The goal feeling ligther while still being acessable.

Speaking of accessable, This new phone runs Windows mobile. It will connect to your computer and be able to trade contacts! Whats that you say? A thin phone that doesn’t break constantly? This new Samsung phone, will not have the suckage that is attached to RAZR fame. Consider picking up this phone when available.

Verizon Wireless will launch its new service, called V Cast Mobile TV, sometime in the first quarter, the company said Sunday at the International Consumer Electronics Show claiming true broadcast quality TV on mobiles for the first time.

At the launch, two handsets one from LG and one from Samsung will be available with more being promised to be added later.

The service comes with a program guide and customers can “channel surf” using the phone’s keypad. The screens on the phones are about two and a half inches diagonally and during the demo the signals were strong and clear. The phones have dedicated TV keys that launch the service. An antenna can be extended to strengthen the signal.

Verizon’s also planning an upgrade to its FIOS digital television service that will let users use their cell phone to program their home digital video recorders, change parental controls and perform other functions.

Korean giant Samsung’s announced that it has developed a double-sided LCD display, which can show two entirely different pictures on both sides. Samsung’s new double-sided LCD can show two different pictures or sets of visual data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen.

This is different from other conventional double-sided LCDs that only show a reverse image of the same video data, the company said. Yun Jin-hyuk, executive vice president in charge of the Mobile Display Division of Samsung’s LCD Business, said, “Our new double-sided mobile display underscores Samsung’s commitment to equip our customers with advanced display technology that accelerates the trend toward slimmer mobile products. We anticipate high demand when we commence mass production in the first half of 2007.”

The new double-sided LCD is 2.6mm thick and 2.22-inch wide, with QVGA (240×320 pixel) resolution, and has brightness values of 250nits for the front and 100nits for the rear display. It will be exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens in Las Vegas on January 8.

Samsung’s out with first 1GB mobile memory chip – the first of its kind. This will spearhead a new revolution in the mobile DRAM (dynamic random access memory) market for mobile products, using 80nm process technology.

The company claims its 1GB, monolithic, Mobile DRAM to be a highly competitive choice for mobile applications over the available double-die stack. Compatible with a wide range of advanced handset applications as well as with digital still cameras, portable media players and portable gaming products, the 1GB mobile DRAM features a temperature-sensing technique that maximizes the efficiency of self-refresh cycle.

The new chip also reduces power consumption in standby mode by up to 30 percent as compared to other double-die stack alternatives. Samsung will enter into mass production of the product in the second-half of 2007. Also offering a more compact form factor, the new 1Gb Mobile DRAM chip is at least 20 percent thinner than a multi-stack package of 512Mb dies, allowing a single high-density package solution of 1.5Gb or even 2Gb Mobile DRAM memory, for which market demand is expected to grow in 2007.

Mobile gaming fans can rejoice as Samsung is launching the SCH-V960 the first handset to include an optical joystick. The new model is a slider phone with a sensor-laden joystick in the spot above the number pad where most phones sport a multidirectional button.

According to Samsung, a user will control the joystick with their finger, activating the phone’s onscreen cursor. This could make finding your way around cell phone menus a little easier and could cut down on erroneous button pushing while trying to open applications.

The phone also has a Smart Lighting feature, which will automatically adjust the brightness of the screen and keypad; other features include a dedicated Bluetooth button, two-megapixel camera, microSD slot, MP3 support, and EV-DO and GPS capabilities. It has a 2.1-inch (240 x 320-pixel), 262,000-color screen.

But for now gamers have to wait as it is only going to available in Korea and if it gains acceptance there, we will soon see it in the US.

Just wanted to get this out for discussion later since I must prepare for a hurricane now. 3GB seems pretty cool, but I wonder how well the OS handles since it is using Windows Mobile 2003. Where is 2005?

Samsung has introduced a 3 GB HDD embedded phone, the SPH-V7900. In September 2004, Samsung introduced SPH-V5400 touting it as the world’s first mobile phone, equipped with 1.5 GB HDD.

The new phone includes features such as a 262K color TFT (240 x 320) display, MMS, WIPI and WAP 2.0. The SPH-V7900 enables users to store over 700 music files with 4MB each, plus two or three full-length movies at 1.1 to 5GB each.

The SPH-V7900 weighs around 165.3g and is 103 x 52 x 27.6mm in size. It supports MPEG-4 AAC/AAC+ for audio, MPEG-4/H.264 for video, has 64-polyphonic stereo sound is provided by high-performance dual speakers, mounted on the exterior folder. The new phone offers IrDA and USB 2.0 connectivity.

Samsung’s new phone incorporates a 2 Megapixel camera, including MP3 player, 2x optical zoom and document viewer functions. It also features harmonic color, whereby musical elements like volume, tone, octave and scale get converted into visual images with different colors and patterns.

– Techtree