Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 7.7 Android Honeycomb Tablet

New 7-inch Honeycomb tablet is first with A high-resolution Super AMOLED Plus display.

New 7-inch Honeycomb tablet is first with A high-resolution Super AMOLED Plus display.

Samsung today launched the successor to its original Galaxy Tab tablet, one year after first showing off the 7-inch Galaxy Tab at last year’s IFA trade show in Berlin. That Samsung would refresh that initial model, and bring its naming convention more in line with the other tablets in the company’s lineup (the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 8.9) was predictable. That Samsung would include a Super AMOLED Plus display on such a large screen was less of a given, but no less welcome.

A year ago, some observers had theorized that Samsung might include an AMOLED display on its first Galaxy Tab. But the company didn't show off its 7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display technology until November 2010. The panels—actually 7.7 inches—went into mass production in August 2011, so the use of Super AMOLED Plus makes total sense for the next-generation 7-inch-class Tab.

The display brings the benefits of Super AMOLED Plus (bright display, vibrant colors) together with a sharp resolution—1280 by 800 pixels. That makes it the highest-resolution display on a tablet we’ve seen. So far.

The Tab’s introduction today, as with the Samsung Note, was a worldwide unveiling. As of now, according to Samsung, there are no plans for it to come to the U.S. market. That said, fall CTIA isn’t far away—and I fully expect we will have news coming from Samsung about Tab 7.7’s U.S. availability just in time for the final holiday shopping crunch.

The Tab 7.7 packs a 1.4GHz dual-core processor (no word on the type of CPU) and Android 3.2v Honeycomb (not clear what the “v” stands for on the spec sheet, though this does include Samsung’s TouchWiz UX interface). Like Samsung’s other Galaxy Tab introductions this year, the 7.7 distinguishes itself with its slim and sleek design. The Tab 7.7 measures 7.89 millimeters thin, or 0.31 inch, practically two-tenths of an inch less than the original Galaxy Tab’s depth.

The new model is lighter, too: It weighs only 335 grams (0.75 pound), which shaves a full tenth of a pound off the weight of last year’s model, and makes this tablet one of the lightest on the market. That weight also helps to make this device the first tablet to seriously begin to close the gap between tablets and dedicated e-readers with E Ink displays. Granted, e-readers now hover around the half-pound mark, but the Tab 7.7’s progress in shedding weight is noteworthy, nonetheless.

Another less touted, but notable inclusion: Universal Remote Control functionality, so you can control your home entertainment system components directly from the tablet. (Presumably this capability uses a built-in IR blaster, but that wasn’t stated on the available spec information.) After trying out a URC on the new Sony Tablet S, I’m convinced this will be one of the must-have features for a tablet going forward.

The connectivity options in this model are strong. The Tab 7.7 supports HSPA+ 21mbps networks, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n (on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands), and Wi-Fi Channel Bonding for improved Wi-Fi performance. As announced in this worldwide version, the Tab 7.7, like the original Tab, supports voice calls. Assuming the 7.7 comes stateside, though, I would expect we’d lose the voice capability, just as we did on the original Tab. (Memo to U.S. carriers: Some consumers actually want their tablet to be capable of acting as their phone, too.)

Samsung says the Tab 7.7’s 5100 mAh battery will provide up to 10 hours of video playback.

The unit will come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities, with a microSD card slot on board for up to 32GB of files. The cautious language of Samsung’s press release indicates a dangerous trend forming, though. The company specifies the microSD card slot is for “direct media files transfer” only, something that Sony did with its Tablet S as well. I don’t like this trend one bit: Consumers are used to card slots supplementing their storage, not being used solely as a transfer mechanism.

Clearly, with this announcement, as well as the recent release of the Acer Iconia A100 and others, the 7-inch-tablet market has a new lease on life. Now all we need is Samsung’s release timing and pricing, which I expect we’ll hear more about by October.

Wacom’s Inkling Captures What You Draw On Paper Digitally

Wacom has announced a pretty amazing product today, the Inkling.

Wacom has announced a pretty amazing product today, the Inkling. This so-called Digital Sketch Pen allows you to capture whatever you draw or write on a sketchbook or any kind of paper in digital form, “stroke by stroke”. Just insert a sheet of paper or a notebook into the receiver, use the Inkling Digital Pen and transfer your works to your computer to refine themdigitally anytime later.

Wacom says that Inkling even lets users create layers in the digital file while sketching on paper, with the push of a button.

Works can be stored as JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG and PDF files for use with any kind of application that supports these formats. The Inkling offers direct transfers to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro/Designer.

Wacom plans to start selling the Inkling worldwide in the next few weeks. In the US, it will be available in “mid-September” for an MSRP of US$199.99, according to the company website.

I am not really an expert in this field, but I am pretty sure this thing will fly off the shelve

Google+ Verified Profiles for Celebrities, Public Figures

Google+ is now rolling out Google+ verified profiles with verification badges for public figures, celebrities, and people added to a large number of Circles. Though Google+ is still planning to develop a way to extend this to the public at large, if you are in enough Google+ circles, you might get a verified Google+ profile soon.

A new tick icon is appearing besides Google+ verified profiles, and if you move your mouse over the tick, it expands to reveal Verified name. I see a lot of top bloggers, Googlers, celebrities have already got the verified badge. Much like verified Twitter profiles, people are more comfortable adding a real celebrity, who has been verified, rather than adding a fake celebrity fan account.

How can you get a verified Google+ profile? - as of now, if you are popular enough, in thousands of Google+ circles, chances are Google will verify you faster.

Report: Apple Preparing New Mac Line

Apple's Mac line offers products for a variety of uses, ranging from lightweight notebooks to powerful desktop towers, but according to Japanese site Macotakara, a brand new Mac product is on its way.

By way of a rough translation, the site reports:

"According to anonymous source in Asian supplier company, Apple seems to be preparing project to release new Mac line-up which is absolutely different from current products until end of this year."

"Though this source does not told in detail, this new Mac line seems to be clearly different products from current ones, so new product name could be given."

The resulting product may mean a number of things, although recent reports of a MacBook Air Pro come to mind. Given, a revised version of current laptops isn't exactly "clearly different," but the actual meaning may be lost in translation.

Bing-Yahoo Search Alliance Gains U.S. Market Share

Microsoft launched its search engine Bing back in 2009. Since then it has been pumping cash into its online search division in the hopes that it may be able to snatch some market share from Google and tap into the lucrative search business.

Web search and advertising account for the majority of Google’s stock that we estimate is worth an intrinsic value of about $192 billion, and so it is little surprise that Microsoft wants to get a piece of the search action as well. Moreover its deal with Yahoo is bearing fruit as ComScore data suggests that Bing now powers nearly a third of all U.S. searches once you combine Yahoo and Bing together.

We have a $28 price estimate for Microsoft and estimate that Bing accounts for around 5% of its value. Our price estimate is about 10% ahead of the market price.

Bing-Yahoo Alliance Gaining

Bing has been growing at a steady pace in the U.S. market. ComScore released some figures this week that suggests that while Bing’s market share remained relatively flat at 14.4%, Yahoo’s market share increased by 0.2% to 16%. Google’s market share decreased from 65.5% to 65.1%. [1]

Since Yahoo’s search engine is powered by Bing, this brings Bing’s total U.S. marketshare to 30.5%, which is almost half of Google’s market share.

While it’s making inroads in the U.S. search market, it hasn’t been able to make much of a dent in the global search market. It still serves only around 4% of the global search market compared to Google that can brag about its 80% share. Bing did score a major victory in its deal to power the English search results for Baidu – the popular Chinese search engine.



Is it Worth it?

While Bing’s efforts have been quite successful, have they been worth it?

Microsoft incurred losses of $2.6 billion in the online division in the fiscal year ended June 30th and lost $728 million last quarter alone. It has been bleeding cash for almost 22 consecutive quarters now, with no signs that it will ever improve. Despite spending so much, data suggests that Bing hasn’t gained market share from Google but instead from other players like Yahoo, Ask and AOL.