Samsung pre-released details of their new 3G smart phone the F700. The phone could prove to be an iPhone killer especially in all the 3G areas where the iPhone is not even on a road map to compete. Samsung will officially unveil the phone next week at the 3GSM World Congress.

Knocking Down iPhone

As a 3G phone this phone will see download speeds up to 7.2Mbps in networks where HSDPA is deployed. That means that a 4mb song could download in 4 seconds and that is much faster than the download speeds an iPhone will see over WiFi.

It has a 5 Megapixel Auto Focus camera. The iPhone only has a 2 megapixel camera.

It has a slide down qwerty keyboard. The iPhone has a touch screen.

It supports Bluetooth and is about twice as thick as a slivr. Oh and it has a 2.78 inch color display that runs a full html browser or Flash.

Taking a Lump or two in Return

Its not WiFi compatible. Its setup for a much more advanced network use, but is not backwards compatible to older WiFi systems essentially(backwards compatible isn’t exactly the right phrase, but I am taking artistic license as this device has leap frogged over the old technology).

The WiFi issue will see that this phone may not be uber popular on college campuses, but the other features could definitely make this popular with twenty somethings or older business executives.

Technorati tags: Samsung, Samsung f700, iPhone killer, 3G

This week when I attended the Consumer Electronics Show, myself and several people at the show had a group epiphany about High Definition television as  we watched a HD TV at the Samsung booth. 

The HD TV on display (one of several dozen) was playing The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (aka Narnia for those that haven’t read the book).  I was standing next to a buyer from a retailer.  As I watched the pivotal battle scene at the end, I noticed that the makeup on the characters looked ludicrously fake.  Many of the characters looked like they had just walked in from trick-or-treating to cameo in the battle scene.

These were not extras or animated characters but supporting role type characters.  The HD TV provided such clear definition that you could see that the makeup was very fake.  The blurred line between fiction and reality had been removed and the reality pretending to be fiction was revealed. 

I started speaking about it with the buyer and he and a couple other viewers commented as well that the Movie Industry would need to up their game to keep up with the technology.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Movie and TV industry would have to get better, but TV manufacturers, distributors and retailers might experience some pain as well.

After all who wants to spend several thousand dollars on a TV only to have a film revealed as a cheap looking fake.  There is no fun in watching a magic act if you can see the slight of hand in every move transmitted in vivid detail as it happens and the same goes for HD TV and the movies and shows they play.  It is an incredible medium for watching reality from sports to nature shows, but staged events and movies are more closely being revealed for the fakes that they are. 

The puppet masters are going to have to find a new method for guiding a puppet without any visible strings.

  Samsung announced this week that they have already begun providing samples of their 16GB NAND flash memory product to customers.  Samsung is hoping to start mass producing this product during the first quarter of 2007.

As samples were released prior to CES it is likely that Samsung will attempt to confirm and accept orders for this new product during CES such that the initial manufacturing build can commence in time to meet a 1st quarter launch.  Instead of surprising customers with a new product at CES Samsung is opting to work with their customers as a partner enabling them to review the product, make their purchasing decision in a timely manner, and then answer follow up questions and close deals when face to face with customers at the show.

Samsung has made an advance in LCD technology that could gain them some ground in the thin phone wars.  They have created a technology that allows them to display two different images on two different sides (front and back) of the same LCD screen.

Many mobile phones offer a front and back view of an LCD screen.  This is actually 2 different screens displaying the same image or mirror image that is.

Samsung’s advance will allow them to remove one of those LCD screens from their phones that have a flip capability.  This will save 1 mm of space in phone design for flip phones.

Currently, Samsung has one of the slimmest phones on the market, the Samsung X820 which measures in at 6.9mm is not a flip phone and will not benefit from this advance.

Motorola, the company that started the race in slim phones, currently offers the slivr which measures 8 mm.  It is not a flip phone either.

Motorola may have had some bad news today, but they were noticeably absent from a line up of consumer electronics manufactures that are being sued by the Washington Research Foundation (WRF) for using Bluetooth technology, which WRF claims is an infringement on their patents.

The suit alleges that the companies Nokia, Samsung and Panasonic (part of Matsushita) used technology from CSR Plc out of the United Kingdom that infringed on the 3 of 4 patents that WRF holds on the technology.

Shares of CSR fell after the announcement of the lawsuit.  It would appear that the larger conglomerates might be at least the victim of not performing enough due diligence into the IP rights of one of their outsourced vendor partners.

BlackBerry has gotten its berries pinched by Samsung Electronics new BlackJack device.  So BlackBerry is doing what it does so very well, its kicked off a Trademark infringement lawsuit, claiming that the BlackJack device is too similar to the BlackBerry trademark especially for a device that could be very easily confused in form and function.  (see review of BlackJack for Cingular)

However, the real issue here is that more and more companies are running out of names to use for trademarks.  Apple recently launched trademark lawsuits against companies that happened to use the word ‘pod’ somewhere in the name of the company or website.

Its a legitimate concern of companies that invest a lot of money into a brand name and device, but Trademark law is not very practical either as there is a limited availability of words in the English language to name a product.  There are also just so many derivatives of English words.

Where will the world be when all of the names have been trademarked?

At a press conference in Korea intended to promote the new Samsung Origami unit called Q1, the presenters ran into technical issues. They were attempting to run the presentation with an actual Q1 (Samsung Origami unit) and technical glitches seemed to steel the show.

The presenter from Samsung had difficulty toggling pages & then before his presentation ended the battery on his Q1 died.

The presenter from Microsoft didn’t fair much better, requiring assistance and then a technical glitch fast forwarded through his slides in just a few seconds.

The third and final presenter from Intel tried to make a brave show of it, but also required assistance from a staff member to get the unit to function.

The unit has already been criticized for having a short battery life (3 hours normal use/ 2 hours DVD), and to have one die in the middle of a presentation by the makers does not help ease the situation.

It would appear that all three groups are going to have to push for an upgrade option for a better battery. Training programs might not hurt either.

The Korea Times : ‘Origami’ Stumps CEOs in Jobs-Style Presentation

The battle over the bulge has moved away from focusing on celluloid and started focusing on cellular. Motorola led the pack with the introduction of the Razr and its recent fight to get the Slvr (pronounced sliver) to market on time. Samsung announced today the introduction of of a phone to one up the Slvr in thickness.

Samsung to sell thinnest cellphone in the US – Yahoo! News: “candy-bar-shaped t509 phone is 9.8 millimeters thick, which makes it thinner than the 11.5-millimeter Slvr, a sibling of the clamshell Razr.”

Its 1.7 millimeter’s will give Samsung bragging rights, but at a usability cost. The phone doesn’t have a camera.

It would appear that Samsung in its fight to keep up with Motorola on Phat has seemed to forgot the lesson that Samsung taught Motorola just a few years ago. Camera’s are now a requirement of any cell phone. A phone without a camera is no longer considered a phone. By the end of the year the less will be a phone without an MP3 player is not a phone and by the end of 2007, the lesson will be a phone that’s not a smart phone with access to high speed networks is not a phone. After that geeks can only anticipate the onset of all the glory that was promised to be in the cell phone industry for the last year, as broad band cometh.

Samsung can be fast, however, and they are projecting a Q2 2006 launch date as compared to Motorola’s launch date of Q3 2006. If either manufacturer slips on a launch date it will be fodder for the first entrant to the market, but even more perilous would be a slip that misses a Christmas date.

Disclaimer. The author of this article holds 50 shares of Motorola stock.