It’s been a few months since Samsung announced their GT-S7550 Blue Earth cellphone, a solar-powered touchscreen handset made from recycled PCM plastics sourced from old water bottles, and since then the company has officially named it and slapped TouchWiz 3.0 onto it. Russian site Mail.ru have been playing with a pre-production model.
Video after the cut
E Ink, the e-paper specialists behind the displays used in Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, Sony’s Reader, the keyboard of the Samsung Alias 2 cellphone and various other devices, has been acquired by Prime View International (PVI). The deal, which valued E Ink at $215m, sees the e-paper IP and technology specialists now combined with the manufacturers of the panels themselves.
We kicked off the week with a review of Sony’s OLED Walkman X, coming away mighty impressed by its iPod-besting audio quality. Equally impressive was Flip Video’s Ultra HD pocket camcorder; if only we could say the same for SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone. While on paper this media-shifting app should be a 100-percent winner, AT&T’s decision to bar streaming over their 3G network has left us and many would-be users upset.
There’s always interesting phone-related news popping up on our radar, so we’d thought we’d share some of what we’ve found with you in a new Phone Roundup! First up is the Motorola Moto W7 Active Edition, announced yesterday, which features two cameras (a 2-megapixel for stills and one VGA for video calls), Bluetooth, expandable microSD card memory, and motion-controlled games plus a pedometer.
We also caught a glimpse of an unboxing of the Samsung Alias 2, which sports an E-ink QWERTY keyboard and a decent price tag of $79.99.
Verizon Wireless have launched the Samsung Alias 2, the distinctive dual-hinged clamshell with an E Ink QWERTY keyboard. Available now priced at $79.99 after an $50 online discount, the Alias 2 has a 2.6-inch QVGA display, 2-megapixel camera and Bluetooth, including support for the stereo headset profile.
We’ve had some much-anticipated and long-awaited gadgets land at SlashGear this week, so we’ve gone overboard with unboxing videos and hands-on galleries. The Verizon MiFi 2200 only had its official announcement earlier this week, but we’ve been waiting for the Novatel EVDO-hotspot for so long you must forgive us some excitement. Meanwhile the Vodafone HTC Magic has the honor of being only the second Android phone to the market, while the Tonium Pacemaker manages to offer something unique in a sea of PMPs.
The Samsung Alias 2 isn’t officially meant to go on sale until May 11th, but that hasn’t stopped one Verizon rep from selling one a few days early. That lucky shopper turned out to be JenJen from HowardForums, and she put together a demo video of the Alias 2’s E Ink keyboard in action.
Video demo of the Alias 2 after the cut
Live shots of the Samsung Alias 2 U750 and the Motorola Rival a445 have leaked, ahead of their official release on Verizon. The Alias 2 is a dual-folding clamshell with an E Ink keypad that offers both numeric and QWERTY layouts; according to phoneArena’s source, the keys refresh “very smoothly and flawlessly”.
The Samsung Alias2 is tipped to be hitting Verizon store shelves on May 11th, according to sources at the carrier. The phone will be the first handset in the US to use E Ink for its keypad: as suggested when the first images of the Alias2 emerged, the dynamic keys can switch from landscape QWERTY to portrait numeric pad.
Details of the Verizon Alias2 have leaked, suggesting the carrier hasn’t given up on the original Alias U740 dual-hinge concept. The Alias2 still opens in portrait and landscape orientations, but now there are apparently dynamically-changing keys that change their labels depending on which way round the handset is held.
SlashGear Japan
