Samsung I8520

We first got our mitts on the Samsung Beam I8520 (codename Halo, no, not that Halo) at the Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress in February. We finally got to spend some quality time with the device in our Labs. Bear in mind that this is still an early prototype with the radios disabled, so we weren't about to test certain features. That said, we still managed to get a pretty good idea of the capabilities of the phone's onboard projector.

Design
The Beam may be chunky compared with the Galaxy S which we previewed recently, but the fact that Samsung managed to keep it relatively slim at 14.9mm after cramming in a projector is no mean feat. Most of the front is taken up by the 3.7-inch WVGA Super AMOLED display. The Menu and Back keys are touch-sensitive, while the center Enter button is a physical one. Above the display is where you find a front-facing camera for video calls.

The Menu and Back keys are touch-sensitive, while the center Enter button is a physical one.

The usual array of controls is littered on the two sides of the phone. You have the volume switch, camera shutter, power and an unlabelled key. There's also a 3.5mm audio jack near the top of the right edge and a micro-USB port on the opposite side. The projector sits recessed, fortunately since there's no protective cover for the lens, on the top. A tiny dial is just around the corner next to it, and is used to adjust the focus of the projection. A sliding door would be good here to protect the lens.

Around the back is an 8-megapixel camera with built-in flash. Like most of the current Samsung phones, a lattice pattern design is used for the rear cover. We were concerned about it breaking when we were trying to pry off the cover to access the microSD card slot beneath.

A lattice pattern design is used for the rear cover.

Features

The highlight of the Beam is obviously the built-in projector by Texas Instruments and, boy, we were impressed. Even given our brightly lit office cubicle, we were able to watch the demo videos from a distance of about an arm's length. When we played the projector in a small meeting room where it was dimmer, the image quality was notably better and simply blew the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj away in a side-by-side test.

Video projection at our brightly lit office cubicle.

Video projection (PowerPoint presentation) in a small meeting room.

Video projection (video) in a small meeting room.

Granted these are very different devices, but both have pico projectors built-in for more or less the same reasons. The camera was no match in all areas, from the sharpness to brightness and resolution of the projection. Our initial concerns about text readability were also unfounded after we loaded Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. While the size of the projection was smaller when looking at documents in portrait mode compared with when we were watching video clips in landscape orientation, we were still able to read the text without having to squint. The effectiveness of the built-in projector, we reckon, would be ideal for small meeting groups. We don't know what accessories will be bundled with the Beam, but if we had our way, a mini tripod with flexible legs would be top of the list.

The main menu for the projector.

The user interface of the project is straightforward with eight generous square buttons. Tapping on the Projector icon activates the beamer, while Images, Videos and Documents are simply file browsers. You can also access the Alarm function from this menu. Quick Pad lets you scribble short notes on the screen, although we didn't find an option to save our random thoughts. What's interesting is the Visual Presenter which lets you project what the camera sees.

The Beam runs on Android 2.1 with a TouchWiz overlay for the interface. There are multiple home screens where you can place widgets and application shortcuts, while the main menu is fully customizable. The Daily Briefing application combines weather, finance and news updates, scheduler and emails into one aggregated view. The Write and Go feature which we saw on the Galaxy S is also on the Beam. This lets you type something, then choose to send it as a text message, email, or status update on Facebook and Twitter.

Other features of the Beam include HSDPA 7.2Mbps/HSUPA 5.76Mbps data connectivity speeds, an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with flash, which also records 720p movies at 30fps, Assisted-GPS, Wi-Fi, DLNA and Bluetooth. Talktime is rated for up to 14 hours with standby time at slightly over 26 days on the 1,800mAh battery.

Outlook
While the Beam will probably cater to a niche market, at least the built-in projector isn't a dud. In fact, we were quite impressed with what we'd seen so far. According to Samsung, the Beam will be available in Europe this quarter. Sadly,there's no word on when or if the phone will ever rollout to Asia Pacific.

Puma Phone

Last month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona wasn't dominated by only the big brands with the usual raft of cutting-edge smartphones. Sports lifestyle company Puma and Sagem Wireless instead showed us that a phone can be fun, and we are right there with them. The aptly named Puma Phone, we found out later, is manufactured by Flextronics, a company that also makes handsets for Microsoft and Motorola.

We don't deny the appeal of this cat since it's completely different, and it helps that the phone is driven by a brand everyone recognizes. Aimed squarely at the young and active crowd, the user interface is entirely custom-designed in-house. You get a silly on-demand digital Puma called Dylan which shows up on the screen demanding your affection, a sarcastic calculator that teases you, and a scratching turntable with the music player. The real draw, however, is the striking red scheme with bold, clearly represented (and playful) icons, and a solar panel around the back, which we'll come to later.

There's an entire suite of sports features on the Sports menu, which includes a pedometer, bike tracker, boat compass, alarm, stopwatch and a news feed reader that lets you keep track of your team's results. The bike tracker, for example, uses GPS to track your workout on a map and you can monitor your distance traveled and speed using the onscreen speedometer. The Favorite page, which is the center of the three-panel home screen layout, features three customizable shortcut icons. The Lifestyle menu comprises your typical phone functions. There are a picture/video gallery, Maps, Webkit browser, messaging and access to the online Puma community, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Adding to the fun and playful nature of the device are Puma icons (more like emoticons) that you can insert in your text messages.

The handset sports a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash, geotagging features with Assisted-GPS, onboard accelerometer, built-in FM radio, microSD expansion card slot, front-facing video call camera and a 3.5mm audio jack. The quad-band GSM phone also supports HSDPA (7.2Mbps) /HSUPA (2.9Mbps) as well as Bluetooth 2.1 EDR connectivity.

The Puma Phone isn't the first handset with built-in solar-harnessing capabilities. In fact, it looks a lot like the Samsung Blue Earth we saw last year. The Puma Phone is quoted at a respectable 15 minutes of talktime or 2 hours of music playback for every hour in the sun. If you're using the cellular out in the open, you could theoretically run it indefinitely. A small icon above the solar panel shows when it is bright enough for juicing up. You can also find out how much you're getting out of solar power, calculated by the number of SMSes sent or minutes of music playback. On a full charge, standby time is about 14.5 days or 5 hours of talktime (2G) for the 880mAh lithium battery.

According to the sports apparel firm, the Puma Phone will be available in Europe next month and Asia in Q4 this year. The retail price is 420 euros, which should be cheaper when purchased with contract from a telco operator.

Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 v13.0.0.264 Incl. Keymaker

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo provides the average photo editor with a much more user-friendly alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It's a high functioning program that's both easy to use and full of features. Usually, a program with a lot of features is far from easy to use, but that's not the case here. Corel decided to dedicate itself to bringing the most user-friendly products possible for the same price their competitors charge.

New to this version is improved photo organization and performance and support for additional RAW formats, HD video, Windows 7 and additional creative project options. They added new tools like multi-photo editing, Express Lab, Smart Carver, Vibrancy, Object Extractor and On-Image Text Editing.

Ease of Use:

You would think a photo editing program with this large of a feature set would be difficult to use; however, that's not the case with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo. It has a feature set as large, if not larger, than most of its more prestigious competitors, but its presentation has a way of making everything make sense. We had no problems navigating this program's menus or figuring out any of its features. We were pleased with how simple it was to complete even the most complex of projects.

Importing:
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo can import screen captures, custom brushes and images from your scanner or camera.

Editing:
Editing photos can be easy with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo One Step Photo Fix. With one click, this program will make automatic adjustments to color, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. In many cases, this was enough to bring out that extra amount of detail or vivid color, but sometimes it just doesn’t do the job. This is where Smart Photo Fix comes in. Manually adjust brightness, saturation, focus, and black and white levels until you get the results you want. Smart Photo Fix shows you the before and after in real time so you always know what the end result will be. Additionally, One Step Noise Removal will automatically get rid of unwanted pixels or groups of pixels that show up as a result of image compression. The Color Balance editor makes it easy to make a picture appear “cooler” or “warmer” by changing the color temperature and tint in both white balance and color balance.

Similar to the Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools, Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo's Clarify tool analyzes the image and adjusts the brightness in each region to intelligently compress contrast into a range that can be shown on screen or on a print. In English, the Clarify tool will sharpen your image, you just choose the strength of the effect and this program does the rest. It’s a great way to bring out fine detail in an image. It’s rare that one remembers to take a tripod to the game or on a hike, and often it’s just too heavy and cumbersome an accessory to lug around. As a result some pictures are more blurred than we would like. Enter High Pass Sharpen, the last in the Enhance Photo tool set. By increasing the contrast of certain pixels, the High Pass Sharpen tool will make the blur crisp again. Specifying the radius around the soft edges will tell this program how far to go, and the resulting image will be much clearer. It’s something one must play with and adjust manually, but it’s an essential tool in the photo editor’s array.

HTC Evo 4G

The EVO 4G is the newest product of the Google phone maker, HTC.

The EVO 4G comes with HTC’s sense UI and it is very similar to the previous version HD2 even though it is a revised version. It has a dazzling 4.3-inch touch screen and a fast processor and it comes with default YouTube application. It plays all types of videos and the quality of video is high.

For those cell phone camera lovers and web cam lovers, the EVO 4G has two cameras one at the rear and one at the front. The rear camera is 8 megapixel and front camera is 1.3 megapixel and it is used for video calling. It has a 1GB of ROM and 512MB of RAM and Bluetooth 2.1 and also with wi_fi 802.11b/g. It records a video at 720p.

“Sprint continues to lead the 4G revolution as we introduce HTC EVO 4G to give our customers an experience that is unlike anything available in wireless to date,” said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. “Not only is this feature-rich device incredible on our Sprint 3G network, but Sprint 4G speeds will take mobile multimedia, including live video streaming, gaming and picture downloads, to a whole new level.”

It comes with 8 GB microSD by default and it is extendable up to 32 GB microSD cards and available. It planed to launch for the sprint network in U.S later this year. The HTC didn’t reveal the information about the price and the worldwide launch.

HTC EVO 4G Specs Summary

The HTC EVO 4G simply crushes everything else on the market thanks to a 4.3″ (480×800) TFT LCD, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM, 8.0mp camera in addition to a 1.3mp front-facing camera for video conferencing, GPS, digital compass, stereo Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile HDTV, and HDMI (720p) output. When it comes to storage, the HTC EVO 4G has 1GB of storage built-in and can support up to 32GB via a microSD slot. The HTC EVO 4G is a flagship Android device, it is obviously running Android 2.1.

Apple Ipad

The Apple iPad. The name is a killing word -- more than a product -- it's a statement, an idea, and potentially a prime mover in the world of consumer electronics. Before iPad it was called the Apple Tablet, the Slate, Canvas, and a handful of other guesses -- but what was little more than rumor and speculation for nearly ten years is now very much a reality. Announced on January 27th to a middling response, Apple has been readying itself for what could be the most significant product launch in its history; the making (or breaking) of an entirely new class of computer for the company. The iPad is something in between its monumental iPhone and wildly successful MacBook line -- a usurper to the netbook throne, and possibly a sign of things to come for the entire personal computer market... if Apple delivers on its promises. And those are some big promises; the company has been tossing around words like "magical" and "revolutionary" to describe what many have dismissed as nothing more than a larger version of its iPod touch. But is that all there is to this device? Is the hope that Apple promises for this new computing experience nothing more than marketing fluff and strategic hyperbole? Or is this a different beast altogether -- a true sign that change has come to the world of the PC? We have the definitive answers to those questions (and many more) right here, so read on for our full review of the Apple iPad!