Samsung announced the followup to the incredibly successful Instinct: The Instinct S30. There are a few changes, most notably the shape and form. The S30 is rounded on the corners, and is slightly wider, yet slimmer. It’s lightweight, has a textured grip, and feels good in the hands.
CTIA Wireless has come and gone for another year, and while many people are complaining about the general lack of new products, there were still interesting devices and services that we got to see demoed and get our hands on. We’re going to list off our favorites from the week, and hope the delay in getting this list up doesn’t bother you too much; we had to really think hard before we decided.
I had the pleasure of getting my hands on a Sound ID 200 Bluetooth headset while at CTIA. I’ve been using it for the last few days and, frankly, I’m quite impressed with the device. It is fast becoming one of my favorite Bluetooth headsets. My experience with the Sound ID 200 has been very positive overall, and I feel Sound ID has a solid headset that exceeds expectations in both comfort and design.
We caught up with SanDisk while at CTIA this week, to check out their Service Delivery Cards. SDCs are pre-loaded custom memory cards, each full of digital content ranging from videos clips, TV shows and music, to games and wallpapers. SanDisk also whipped out their CompactFlash Extreme IV series storage to try to tempt resident SlashGear photographer Daniel Lim.
There’s just enough time for a final snippet of Palm Pre goodness from CTIA 2009, and now we’ve a live video demo of the Palm OS ‘Classic’ emulator. Made by MotionApps, Classic runs as a standard ‘card’ in webOS and allows old apps that have been dragged over to the Pre’s internal storage to be loaded as if on an old Palm OS device.
Palm Pre Classic emulator video demo after the cut
Sound ID announced two new Bluetooth headsets, the Sound ID 200 and Sound ID 300, and we grabbed some ears-on time with them at MobileFocus. The company’s claim to fame is that its founder is an otologist at Stanford University, and Sound ID claim that gives them the edge in audio quality. As for tech, each has NoiseNavigation technology, Sound ID’s proprietary noise cancellation system.
After MSI confirmed the US specs for their Wind U123 netbook and larger X-Slim X320 and X340 ultraportables yesterday, we were keen to spend some hands-on time with the slick notebooks. Of the selection, the MSI X-Slim X340 is undoubtedly our favorite, but there’s plenty to recommend the others: how about 5.5hrs runtime from the 6-cell battery, or 8.5hrs from the 9-cell, on the Wind U123?
Video demo after the cut
As well as the GO 740 LIVE, TomTom have announced four other new GPS models in their ONE and XL ranges, and we caught up with the company at MobileFocus to check them out. The TomTom ONE 140 and ONE 140S both have a 3.5-inch touchscreen, while the TomTom XL 340 and XL 340S have a 4.3-inch touchscreen; in each case, the ‘S’ suffix indicates text-to-speech support for spoken street and place names.
Video demo after the cut
Motorola’s freshly announced Evoke and MOTOROKR S320 Bluetooth Headset were at MobileFocus on Wednesday night for our viewing and hands-on pleasure. The Evoke is a decent touchscreen phone with a slide out keypad, as well as a full QWERTY when the touchscreen is in landscape mode. The phone home screen features 7 widgets that are always on, including YouTube, Weather, and more. The OS uses icon based buttons to make navigating as easy as possible for users who have never used a touchscreen device.
Video demo after the cut
BlueAnt’s forthcoming product is the Q1 Bluetooth headset. This sleek headset features some amazing noise reduction technology and voice isolation. The most innovative feature of the BlueAnt Q1 is the voice control feature. The user can talk to the headset and tell it what needs to be done. For instance, if the user would like a tutorial of using the Q1, the user says “show me” and the Q1 will walk the user through the features. To pair the device, the user simply says “pair me.” The Q1 will even tell you your phone and headset battery life with the command “check battery” There are numerous other commands as well.
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