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Mar. 23, 2010

Today, Samsung has announced its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S. The four-inch touchscreen device runs on Google's Android version 2.1 and a 1 GHz processor developed by Samsung.

At less than 10 millimeters in thickness, the new handset packs all of the latest smartphone technology into the thinnest, full-featured smartphone in the galaxy, said Omar Khan, vice president of strategy, products and services at Samsung.

The South Korean electronics giant also took the opportunity to introduce S Life (or Smart Life), a custom-built user experience that tweaks and improves the content and features smartphone users demand in a more cohesive environment.

There's also a Daily Briefing feature, which gathers custom information from a series of widgets and delivers them to the user on demand.

Khan said “we've packed powerful innovative cutting-edge technology into this new device. Together, the Samsung Galaxy S and Smart Life are going to give people experiences that are integrated and immersive.”

Kevin Thau, vice president of mobile business at Twitter, was invited on stage to applaud Samsung's efforts and describe how “products like the Galaxy S will help put a new face on Twitter,” he said.

“Everything that you're viewing and working with on Twitter will look its best,” he added. “Twitter is on board with this new generation of smartphone.”

Overall, the new features available on the new device are vast. In a move strikingly similar to some of its rivals, Samsung developed a Social Hub that integrates the entire universe of social media and plugs the user into their many outlets in just a single interface.

Executives from Skiff and Paramount also announced their plans for making their content available on the new device as well.

The Super "Amoled" screen is about 19 percent brighter, about 81 percent less reflective in direct sunlight and increases battery life by over 18 percent on average, according to Samsung.

Another key feature of the Galaxy S is a Layer Reality Browser, powered by Tele Atlas, that acts as a visual overlay that updates relevant location information on the screen when the camera is used to capture a user's surroundings.

The new Galaxy S also includes HD video capture, a wireless tethering app, a remote controller for any Samsung TV and "All Share via DLNA", which allows users to display media-rich content from their device on compatible PCs, TVs and digital cameras.

In other news, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center, about 30 percent of wireless users in the U.S. get their news on their smartphones. The report was released by the group and offers another sign of how people are changing the way they read information and current events that affect them.

The research firm doesn't have any comparable data for two or three years ago, however. But evidence of the shift in habits can be seen in this finding: Younger mobile phone owners are more likely to look for news on their smartphones.

Almost half of users under age 50 said they are mobile news consumers, compared with about 14.9 percent of older respondents.

But readers' number one concern when they look for news on their phones is still the weather, however. Of the 36.7 percent of all mobile phone owners who said they use the Internet on their smartphone, over 71.9 percent said they check weather reports.

Current news came in rather close with 68.2 percent, however. And Pew expects the trend to continue, as more and more users get new iPhones, Blackberries and other smartphones.

The Internet is also helping to turn the news into more of a social experience: Pew says that about 80.8 percent of all respondents read their news via e-mailed links and various news feeds scattered all over the Web.

Overall, technology has been reshaping the news business and the way consumers relate to it for more than ten years already. And this latest trend is being accelerated by the exploding popularity of smartphones that can easily access the Web from anywhere.

Pew's new study offered a wider range of statistics on people's news habits than ever before, according to the company. It also demonstrated that users are not just relying on one medium alone.

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Source: Samsung.