Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S4, a phone that allows users to scroll with their eyes and navigate the screen without touching it, Thursday evening at an event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Some of the highlights of this new mobile phone includes a 5 inch 441 ppi AMOLED screen, concurrent recording of front and rear camera, a 13 megapixel camera etc. There is also an eye tracking feature which pauses videos when you turn your head away from the screen. Watch the video to find out more.

Video of the launch event held in USA. (Fast Forward it to the 40th minute to watch the presentation)

One of the new function is ‘Air Gesture,’ which allows users to navigate their phone without actually touching the device. Another feature is ‘Smart Scroll’, which enables users to scroll without touching the screen. It tracks the users’ face to tell where they are looking. ‘Smart Pause’ is a similar feature that tracks when a user is watching something on their phone so that it can pause the media when a user looks away.

As for the camera function, Samsung has a ‘Sound and Shot’ will allow users to send still images with voice messages and the ‘Drama Shot’ feature lets users take up to 100 shots in four seconds.

Some addition function includes a language translating app. Users can type a sentence into the phone and select the language they want to translate it to and the device will speak the translation.

Specs on page 2.

Samsung Mobile has posted on their facebook fan page to alert users not to flash update the latest firmware on their Samsung SIII.

“Dear fans, the recent software update for GALAXY S III, Jelly Bean 4.1.2 (XXELLC), that some of you might have received was not meant for released in the Singapore market. We do offer our sincere apologies for inconvenience caused. We will keep our fans updated when the software is ready.”

Those who have flashed are experiencing issues with their phones. One user Vincent woo posted a note claiming that after the jelly bean update, it takes me more than 9 hours to charge from 10% to full, even when I wake up after charging overnight, it is not full battery.

Some users claim that it is a good firmware to keep as it fixes the “sudden death” issue. There were also complains about the availability of the firmware on time while some couldn’t get it updated using KIES, the updating software that accompanies the smartphone.

Are you facing strange issues with this new firmware. Comment below.

The 3 telcos has been catching up with one another in delivering the fastest broadband speeds. Although M1 was late to introduce the service, they are the first to introduce it country wide this September 15.

M1′s LTE speed will range from 6.9Mbps to 17.4Mbps and will cover 95% of the including both outdoor and indoor locations.

New smartphone and mobile broadband service plans

M1 also announced that it will introduce new smartphone and mobile broadband service plans, in conjunction with its 4G service launch.

New M1 Smartphone Service Plans

New M1 Mobile Broadband Service Plans

With the new data bundles starting from 2GB per month, the majority of customers will not incur higher charges. 78% of smartphone users consume less than 2GB of mobile data per month and 93% less than 5GB of mobile data per month. For customers who use beyond bundled allowances, excess data will be priced at an affordable $5.35 per GB.

Furthermore, re-contracting M1 customers will be given an additional 1GB of complimentary data bundle on the new smartphone and mobile broadband plans.

M1’s new smartphone and mobile broadband service plans will be made available to all new and re-contracting customers from 15 September 2012.

At launch, 4G devices that will be available include handsets: Samsung GALAXY Note LTE, Samsung GALAXY SII LTE, HTC One XL and LG Optimus True HD LTE; tablets: ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TL and Samsung GALAXY Tab 8.9 LTE; USB modem: Huawei E392, and mobile Wi-Fi modem: Huawei E589.

Live Demonstration

Customers can experience live demonstration of the amazing 4G service at M1’s flagship shop at Paragon from 6 September 2012. At the Live 4G demo-zone, customers will be able to test out new 4G handsets and tablets on M1’s 4G network, and experience first-hand, the next generation mobile experience.

For more information on M1’s amazing 4G network and services, please visit www.m1.com.sg/4G.

SingTel on the other hand was launched in June and will only cover 80% by year end and 95% by 1Q 2013. Starhub is expected to roll out LTE by year end.

Both telco uses LTE that runs on 1,800MHz and 2.600MHz frequencies. Customers who buy 4G devices do take note that it must support these spectrums otherwise it can’t take advantage of LTE.

Phones and tablet that will work are Samsung Galaxy Note LTE, Samsung Galaxy SII LTE, HTC One XL and LG Optimus True HD LTE phones, as well as the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL and Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE tablets. Unfortunately the Apple new iPad won’t run in LTE mod as it supports the 700MHz and 2100MHz spectrums.

Apple won a jury verdict of more than $1.05 billion against Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) after a finding that Samsung infringed six of seven patents for mobile devices in the first lawsuit to go before a U.S. jury.

Apple, sued Samsung in April 2011, and Samsung countersued each other in the U.K., Australia and South Korea. Apple sought $2.5 billion to $2.75 billion for its claims that Suwon, South Korea- based Samsung infringed four design patents and three software patents in copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung’s demand for as much as $421.8 million in royalties was based on claims that Apple infringed five patents.

Apple also wants to make permanent a preliminary ban it won on U.S. sales of a Samsung tablet computer and extend the ban to Samsung smartphones. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the San Jose trial, would decide that question herself without the jury.

Samsung Galaxy Tab ‘GT-P5100′ pictured alongside two unannounced smartphones

Samsung might not have a press conference scheduled for this year’s Mobile World Congress, but the South Korea-based technology giant still has a handful of new devices that are expected to be unveiled during the show. Among them is a new Samsung Galaxy Tab code-named GT-P5100, and German tech blog BestBoyz claims to have obtained several pictures of the unannounced tablet. Not much can be gleaned from the images, but BestBoyZ says the tablet features a 10-inch display and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. We can also see from the image above that the tablet will sport Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface on top of Android 4.0, and the design of the GT-P5100 looks very similar to the Galaxy Tab 10.1N. Could this be the high-definition slate we scooped back in December? Mobile World Congress kicks off in less than a day, so we’ll know soon enough. One more picture of the new tablet alongside two unannounced Samsung smartphones follows below.

If you are looking for the latest news on the latest gadgets, you can read about the latest discoveries and reports in our forums at this forum link.

If you have been waiting for the Android 4.0, Google and Samsung just finished it’s press event in Hong Kong minutes ago.

At the event, Samsung was first to speak about it’s new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first phone powered by the new Android 4.0 operating system.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

The new phone is based is a HSPA+ 21Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps phone supporting 850/900/1900/1700/2100. EDGE/GPRS 850900/1800/1900. It has a 1.2GHz dual core processor with a large 4.65″ 1280×720 HD Super AMOLED Screen powered by by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be offered in HSPA+ in NOV 2011 and LTE versions in different regions later. It has a Super AMOLED HD 1280×720 display with contrast ratio of 100,000:1. The screen is 4.65inch. it has a Contour display, sleek and curve 8.94mm and a bezel of 4.29mm.

It has a 5 megapixel full HD recording camera with 0 shutter lag for low light shooting. It will come with Barometer, NFC – payment options, contacts sharing, POGO pin – docking for sharing videos.

The camera is a 5 mega pixel camera with LED. Front camera is a 1.3 mega pixel for video conferencing.

The camera is also capable of doing vido recording in MPEG4/H.263/H.264 ni 1080p@30fps HD. Music playback is in Mp3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+

The phone has BT ver 3.0, USB 2.0, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz/5GHz) and NFC. It also has Accelerometer, Compass, Gyro, Promimity and Barometer.

The memory capacity is 1GB (RAM) + 16GB/32GB (ROM). It has a dimension of 135.5×67.94×8.44mm and weighs 135g and comes with a 1750mAh battery.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Android 4.0 will have a new font type – Roboto which gives the phone a magazine layout font type that is easy to the eyes. There is a new lock screen for it and Android has also update the animations and Live wall papers.

Buttons are gone, replaced with touch screen virtual buttons which are part of the OS. With the new OS you can now group apps into folder just like Apple’s iOS. You can also place your favourite apps or contacts on the taskbar.

Other improvements over the previous versions include a new pull down notification screen, more accurate and responsive keyboard, in line spell checker, improved cut and paste.

Something different is that Android 4.0 now offer voice recognition in real time, it does not need to ‘think’ for a few seconds, it just show you word for word when you speak into the phone.

ANother new idea they have is the face unlock feature. By capturing your face, the phone will be able to recognise the owner of the phone and unlock it. It did not mention what will happen if it recognises the person wrongly for more than 3 times, does it destory all the data intact ? Unfortunately, we are unable to witness it as the demo failed probably due to beta ware.

Other improvements include web browser. It now allows you to do inprivate browsing, offline reading, gmail offline search for 30 days, a revamped calendar.

For those on limited HSPA traffic, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich now offers you a way to check your data usage. It can also detect which are the applications that are choking up data for the month. Of course you can set alert when your data usage is reaching say 5 GB.

You can now take pictures without entering the phone by dragging the lock bar to the left to access the camera feature. with the immediate access, you can now send pictures almost instantly to social networks. enhance it with filters to change angle of shot etc. There is also panorama shooting which stiches photos for a wider viewing angle. Video recording is 1080P HD. It can zoom and focus continuously. it can also do time lapse video recording.

ANdroid 4.0 also introduce PEOPLE APP, a central application that keeps you updated with your contacts social network profiles and contact information.

Lastly, Android 4.0 comes with NFC. A new program Android Beam is introduced that is capable ot sharing any content between android devices by placing two phones back to back

Users can now share photos, contacts, even share the game (on marketplace) by just bumpping the two phones back to back.

At the closing of the media conference, Google reiterate that the developer tools are ready and the first Android 4.0 phone will go on sale in November.

Which mobile phones and tablets to see at CommunicAsia 2011 ?

CommunicAsia 2011 will be held in Singapore from 21 to 24 June in Singapore. This year, we will see less mobile phone manufacturers participating in this event.

Samsung is out as it has it’s own trade show held annually. LG also pulled out since 2010.

Sony Ericsson will not be participating at the CommunicAsia as usual. Instead it will have it’s own media event on the 2nd day of CommunicAsia. They have invited regional media and there are already rumours that they will be launching a dual core Android powerhouse. So, far details are sketchy but we will soon know in the coming days.

Nokia which held Nokia Connections event yearly is back in a big way at the event though. Will Nokia be announcing showcasing their phones based on Windows Phone 7.

As usual the two biggest Chinese players, Huawei and ZTE should be there and they might be showing more tablets based on Android as that is in the in thing right now.

Stay tuned at OCWORKBENCH in the coming days for more.

- Google TV to launch in US this autumn, worldwide in 2011

- CEO says new Chrome OS to run tablet computers

- Tablet partnerships to be announced later this year

According to Reuters news, Google will launch its service to bring the Web to TV screens in the United States this autumn and worldwide next year, said it’s CEO Eric Schmidt.

Google TV will allow full internet browsing via the TV and it will be free. Google will work with a variety of programme makers and electronics manufacturers to bring it to consumers.

Sony last week had agreed to have Google TV on it’s TV sets and Samsung is looking into it. This come as a challenge to Apple TV which was announced just earlier.

On the tablet front, the Galaxy Tab is powered by Android 2.2. Google on the other hand is pushing Google’s Chrome OS (due to be launched soon) for the tablets.

Seagate and Samsung, the two major makers of hard drives and system memory, announced Thursday that they have entered into a joint development and licensing agreement.

 Under this agreement, the two companies will develop and cross-license related controller technologies for solid state drives.

This is interesting; Samsung has released many consumer-grade SSDs, whereas Seagate has recently taken the route of hybrid drive with the release of the Seagate Momentus XT (500GB). The company’s first attempt into the SSD market with the Pulsar drive didn’t make much of a splash.

According to Seagate, however, the two companies aim to develop new SSDs for the enterprise storage market, of which Seagate has been a strong player with traditional platter-based hard drives.

Steve Luczo, Seagate’s chairman, president, and CEO said, “Today’s agreement with Samsung will help us bring a compelling set of SSD innovations to the enterprise storage market, with benefits that range from enhanced performance, endurance, and reliability to cost and capacity improvements.”

Seagate says that the joint development will build on the existing SSD capabilities of each company while combining Seagate’s enterprise storage technology with Samsung’s 30 nanometer-class MLC NAND flash memory technology. Seagate will then use the jointly developed controller for its enterprise-class SSDs.

The first SSDs based on this joint development is expected to be available by the middle of 2012.

Source CNET

The annaul CommunicAsia 2010 trade show is about to begin in 2 days time in Singapore. This annual event has attracted trade visitors and media from around the globe to check out the latest wireless technology and most importantly mobile phones.

As usual, the major brands will be missing from the show. Sony Ericsson and Nokia will be holding their own private events at hotel ballrooms on two seperate days.  Koeran companies LG will have no presense at the exhibition as well.  Japanese giant NTT Docomo will have a more significant presense this year, showcasing it’s LTE technology and Xperia series of Sony Ericsson phones at the show.

In conjunction with the event, the local telcos won’t be sitting back. It is said that one of them will be announcing more exclusive phones to their stable of Android phones. Perhaps, one of the three might just announce the availability of iPhone 4 and iPad for the local market during this period of time.

So, stay tuned while we bring you more this coming week.

Samsung Galaxy was revealed at CITA Wireless 2010 and the full specification of the phone was never released till now.
Today the spec has leak via FRAndroid A French Tech/Android Blog.

• CPU : ARM Cortex A8 1GHz – Hummingbird
• GPU: PowerVR SGX540
• ROM : 8 GB / 16 GB
• RAM : 512 MB
• Size: 122 x 64 x 10 mm
• Weight: 118g (with battery)
• Networks: QuadBand (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G tri-band (900/1900/2100 MHz), 3G HSDPA 7.2 MBps (3G +) HSUPA
• GPS
• Wi-Fi: 802.11 (b / g / n)
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Battery: 1500mAh
• microSD (2.0 compatible)
• Camera: 5MP, 720p 30fps
• Resolution: 800×480 pixels (WQVGA)
• Android 2.1

Galaxy S screen hardware also comes with a 16 point multitouch Atmel maXTouch that can handle up to 16 input simultaneously (theoretically sound but we are not sure if Samsung has fully implemented it into the phone. With such high end parts comes higher production cost for the screen. So are we paying more for something that we might not use? We will have to wait till Android OS get ironed out to realize if Galaxy S can prove itself as a powerhouse smartphone to be reckon with) Something we do notice is that the phone multitouch is more accurate than the HTC Desire.

Aside from this piece of good news. We recently came across Gameloft dropping a surprise for Android users. We saw 10 games via their own pay site which was pull down after the initial launch (Some nexus users complained that some of the game offered did not work, OCWorkbench suspect that these 10 games was actually build for and aimed at Galaxy S as the launch platform thus the pull out till further notice.) FRAndroid manage to get their hand busy playing  NOVA on Galaxy S.

More pictures of the phone in action can be found here