electronics info

Samsung could be the first to introduce a production notebook with a transparent display, Samsung America’s digital imaging VP Reid Sullivan has revealed. After showing a 14-inch see-through AMOLED screen at CES this year, the Korean company now says that testing suggests the PC could be in shops within the next 12 months. Sullivan expects that “all” Samsung’s AV hardware could use the technology soon.

The company has already tested out transparent AMOLEDs on a small scale with the IceTouch, a media player with a 2-inch touchscreen. Until now, such displays have often been cost-prohibitive due to the price of an AMOLED, but economies of scale have grown to make at least smaller screens reasonable. The IceTouch should sell in the US for about $378 within the first half of this year.

AMOLEDs by themselves are considered an advantage over LCD through their thinness, their color accuracy and the absence of an energy-hungry backlight. Transparency is likely to be just a cosmetic feature at first, but it allows for notebooks, players and phones that lift the isolation of the user and helps handheld users see what’s in view.

THQ chief executive officer Brian Farrell may have given more credence to previous reports that the new PlayStation 3 motion controller device will be named the Playstation Arc. In a call with investors, Farrell referred to the new controller as the Playstation Arc repeatedly, in both his prepared remarks and during the Q&A session that followed.

In the prepared statement which opened the call, Farrell noted opportunities for his company with “new family-friendly platforms such as Microsoft’s Natal and the PlayStation Arc motion controller.” Project Natal is the motion controller being developed for the Xbox 360.

It may be that “Arc” is just a working name for the device. Sony was using “Gem” as an internal codename earlier in development. Officially, Sony refers to the new device as the Motion Controller. It is expected to start shipping in fall 2010

If the Droid is the heat-seeking missle in Verizon’s lineup of Android phones, the Devour is the social butterfly, thanks to Motorola’s Motoblur service. Like the  on T-Mobile, this device features the Happenings Widget, which pushes social networking updates straight to the 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, and a universal inbox (which combines texts, e-mails, and social network messages). And all of your info–including home screen customizations–is backed up for you.

What makes the Devour different, other than the network, is its design. Unlike the Cliq, which comes in black and white, this device is a silver slider with a spacious keyboard. We’ll have to see about the feel, though, since the Cliq’s keys seem more plump. The press release also mentions a touch-sensitive navigation pad. Plus, like the Motorola Droid ($499.99), this smart phone comes with Google Maps Navigation, so you can expect free turn-by-turn directions. So this likely means the device runs Android 1.6.

Verizon hasn’t confirmed a price yet, but we’re assuming that the Devour will be cheaper than the Droid because it has a smaller screen and (based on reports) a slower processor. Read on for more details and stay tuned for a full review.

Key features:

• Touch-sensitive navigation pad
• 3.1” capacitive touch screen
• Pre-loaded applications such as Gmail, Google Talk™, YouTube™, Google Search™ and Google Maps™ with Google Maps Navigation.
• Android Market™ gives users access to more than 20,000 applications.
• Happenings Widget – MOTOBLUR automatically pushes status updates, wall posts and photo updates from popular social networking sites to the Happenings Widget on the home screen. Customers can flick through the latest updates and fire back responses using the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard.
• Universal Inbox – MOTOBLUR gathers texts, social network messages and e-mails into one home screen widget for quick response.
• Back-Up and Security – Contacts, log-in information, home screen customizations, e-mail and social network messages are backed up automatically on the secure MOTOBLUR portal.  The portal also allows customers to use the phone’s fully integrated aGPS to help locate the phone if misplaced. Remote wipe easily clears information from a lost device.
• 8 GB microSD™ card pre-installed
• Bluetooth^® profiles supported: A2DP, HID, HSP, HFP, AVRCP and GAP

Service plans:

• To get the most from Motorola DEVOUR, customers will need to subscribe to a Nationwide Talk or Nationwide Talk & Text plan and a Data Package for smartphones.  Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 monthly access, and Nationwide Talk & Text plans begin at $59.99 monthly access.  A Data Package for smartphones is $29.99 for unlimited monthly access

The is a laptop that is–to coin a phrase–suited up. At just 0.6 inches thick, its the thinnest 16-inch notebook ever, making it a tempting choice for well-heeled execs (or at least those still receiving bonuses). Its red velvety exterior and chrome accents–to say nothing of the wireless induction charging stand and touch controls on the bezel–certainly scream luxury.

But the more we used this desktop replacement with ultraportable guts, the more we questioned its value. , this $3,806 system’s performance and endurance don’t match the high price. It’s $3,106 without the charging stand and wireless dock.

Perhaps the most innovative thing about the Z600 is its ARM 600Mhz TI 3430 OMAP  processor (and 512MB of RAM), which is only activated when using the Latitude On operating system. While the OS is rather rudimentary compared to ASUS’ ExpressGate–there’s no Skype, music, or movie app, for example–the low power consumption of the ARM processor allowed the Z600 to last for 11 hours and 35 minutes on our Notebook batteries provide power to the system

Looking at the iPad SDK, programmers are starting to say that the new version of the iPhone OS will support video calls, file downloads, and some sort of multitasking. There’s also several other features in the SDK that won’t work with the iPad, but would be applicable to the iPhone in it’s current configuration.
We might have been underwhelmed by the iPad, but the OS it’s running may be another story. We’re starting to see glimpses of a major software update that could include some of the functionality that people have really missed in their iPhone. It appears that the next update will include the ability to video conference, as well as run the video in a partial or full screen, suggesting that you might be able to use another application while making a call. There also appears to be support for multiple, and even custom dictionaries, as well as a handwriting keyboard. There are also hooks for location aware mapping as well as a file upload function in Safari. It appears that while the iPhone has taken it’s lumps from the Android, it’s not down and out yet

The ExoPC Slate tablet PC is slated to go head-to-head with Apple’s recently announced 9.7-inch iPad. The 8.9-inch device has Flash support and runs on Windows 7, however, for a more complete web browsing capability. There is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU along with 2GB of RAM, while storage comes from a 32GB solid state drive and SD memory cards.

Intel’s integrated GMA950 graphics processor handles the video processing on the 1024×600 resolution screen. Wi-Fi is built-in, along with a Bluetooth and Ethernet connection. A 1.3-megapixel camera captures photos and videos, and there are three USB ports, a VGA output and a SIM card slot for connecting to 3G data networks. The battery is rated at four hours. A virtual keyboard, app support and e-book compatibility round out the known features of the device.

When Lost returns on Tuesday, the surprises will come thick and fast. How would you survive if you were trapped inside a twisty J.J. Abrams story? There’s only one way to find out: by playing the J.J. Abrams board game.

(Click the board game to make it super big.)

We compiled a set of common J.J. Abrams plot twists, from all of his TV shows and movies. Pretty much every square of this board game is something that’s happened in at least a couple Abrams joints, and some of them are common across the whole of the J.J.-verse. (If you can name which J.J. Abrams shows or movies these shocking reveals and turns of events are from in the comments, we’ll give you an extra free throw of the dice, or maybe a “Get Out Of Causality Loop Free” card.)

We’ve created a starter set of “J.J. Widget” cards for you to put on the center of the board:

Feel free to suggest some other candidates for “J.J. Widgets” in the comments. If we get some awesome suggestions, we’ll include them in an “expansion pack” of cards next week.

How to play: Take two six-sided dice and throw. Divide the result by fate versus free will to get the number of squares you can move forward. When you land on “Causality Loop,” you have to keep rolling until your die roll equals the product of Faith x Science. If you land on “Symbol Overload,” take a card from the “J.J. Widgets” stack in the center of the board. And yes, if you reach the final square, all of your questions will be answered!

(And before anybody points it out in comments, we know that J.J. Abrams isn’t really in day-to-day control over Lost any more. But he launched it and it’s still part of the J.J.-verse, which he runs alongside a brain trust that includes Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Jeff Pinkner, Bryan Burk and others. In fact, you could argue that J.J. Abrams is really ten guys.)

Dell recently issued a BIOS fix for its Studio 17 with Core i7, designed to solve a serious crashing issue. However, after the release of Intel’s new Core i5 processor and a number of vocal user complaints about its Core i7 product, the company has made the lower-powered and priced Core i5 the Studio 17’s default CPU choice. Though, as of this posting, we did not see a Core i7 option on Dell.com, a rep assured us that the Core i7 model, labeled the Dell Studio 1747 has not been discontinued and will return to the site within days.

When we reviewed the Dell Studio 17 with Intel’s Core i7 processor (aka Dell Studio 1747) in November, we gave the notebook a 4-star rating due to its blazing performance and relatively affordable price. However, we noted two major problems we experienced with our review unit. First, the initial system we received stopped booting (and made several beeping noises) just after testing had been completed and, second, we noticed that the exterior of the chassis got hot, with the underside of the system registering a troubling 112-degrees Fahrenheit after just 15 minutes of playing a Hulu video.

We returned the first unit to Dell, which repaired it and sent it back to us a couple of days later, saying that the first issue we encountered was an isolated incident. The repaired unit worked, but we did experience experience a couple of mysterious blue screen crashes the first time we tried to play Hulu videos on it, though these seemed to disappear on subsequent tests. After we informed Dell about the uncomfortably hot temperatures, they sent us a second review unit to test. This second unit  did not break or crash, but was just as hot as the original.

Readers Respond

Without having tested an entire assembly line of Dell Studio 17s with Core i7, it was impossible for us to tell if the one defective review unit we received was a fluke or a harbinger of trouble. However, after the product began shipping, we began receiving negative reports from many users, claiming that their Dell Studio 1747s (with Core i7) had died after a few days or hours of use.

A number of users also posted on forums that their Dell Studio 1747s slowed down after intense use. For example, a French-speaking user posted this experiment, which claims that after running two CPU-intensive programs, Prime 95 and Furmark, the CPU speed dropped from 1.6 to 1.06-GHz. Notebookcheck.com, a professional review site, did not see a clock speed drop but did see their test notebook’s 3DMark06 scores drop significantly after 12 hours of intense use. We did not test our review unit for performance throttling before we had to return it to Dell.

Dell’s BIOS Update

Recently, Dell  issued a BIOS update that fixes what they call the “7 beeps problem,” the same issue that bricked our first review unit. Dell advises that, if you own a Dell Studio 1747 that is working properly, you should install the BIOS update to insure you never get the 7 beeps problem. If your Dell Studio 1747 has already stopped booting, you can call Dell support or try re-seating the CMOS battery to bring the system back to life.

Whether the new BIOS update (termed the A04 BIOS) makes the system cooler or resolves its alleged performance issues remains to be seen. If you have a Dell Studio 1747, please let us know if the BIOS update has improved your system by posting in the comments below.

Own another Dell notebook or netbook? Sound off here on what you think of the brand