We get it. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes when you're staring into the sad abyss of an empty Tennessee fifth, the idea of initiating an impromptu video conference in total darkness seems mighty compelling. That's where Samsung's SCH-W760 with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and front-facing infrared camera can help. It's available now in Korea and could be the difference between making a solo bed-spin performance or 3- to 6-months served at county for violating your restraining order. The choice is yours for KRW580,000 or about 445 of the green stuff.

Ready for even more rumors about Windows Mobile 7 and Microsoft's mysterious "Pink" smartphone project? Good, cause we've got a few -- and the first is potentially huge. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says her best understanding of "Pink" is now that it's a Microsoft-branded phone running a custom UI on top of Windows Mobile 7, developed by what's left of the Danger team and targeted at the Sidekick market. Yep, Microsoft-branded -- as in, the exact thing Microsoft has been denying for ages now. What's more, Redmond wouldn't be letting third parties use this new UI -- Pink would be manufactured only by Sharp or Motorola, who've made Sidekicks in the past. It all makes sense, even if it does feel a bit like MS is knifing its partners in the back -- companies like HTC and Samsung have been equally aggressive in layering their own UIs like TouchFLO 3D and TouchWiz on top of WinMo, but it's another thing entirely to compete against Microsoft itself, especially now that AdWeek says Microsoft's selected an agency to develop a Pink ad campaign. Yeah, things are starting to get a little wild -- we haven't even mentioned the open questions of whether the Zune HD is running Tegra because it's based on Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, or whether Pink will launch on Verizon, or whether Zune will appear on other phones, or... you get the idea. Hey Microsoft -- you want to clear any of this up by shipping some products?

Read - ZDNet
Read - AdWeek

Yes, folks, that day you've been so eagerly awaiting is nearly here. Soon you won't have to suffer the agony of pixel envy on your cellphones thanks to Samsung's M8910 Pixon12 and its whopping 12 megapixel sensor, capturing light through a 28mm wide-angle lens like that in the Nokia N86 (which has a miserly eight megapixels on tap). Sammy's handset has been put through its paces ahead of release, stacked up against the likes of a Canon A620 and a 350D SLR. The phone does quite well, producing images as good or better than its compact competition, but we're not quite sure we agree with the assessment that it "can reach the detail resolved by a true DSLR" -- at least, not in this batch of images. We want to believe, though, we really do; those SLRs are heavy, and we're not a particularly strong bunch.

We just spent some time talking to Sharp's reps about that ITC ban on its LCD panels, and while they certainly didn't sound happy about the ruling, they made it clear that it shouldn't have too much of an effect on US consumers -- Aquos TVs and Sharp professional LCD displays currently on shelves are fine to be sold, and updated models have been hitting the channel as of last month. As you'd expect, the new displays have been re-engineered to workaround the Samsung patent in question, but here's where it gets confusing: the basic model numbers haven't changed. Instead, the new units have an "N" at the end, so a TV like the Aquos LC52-E77U will now be labeled LC52-E77UN. Sharp says the updated models have exactly the same specs as the outgoing ones, but we're waiting on a detailed list of spec changes -- or better, a side-by-side comparison -- so we can decide whether or not the HDTV equivalents of a pre-CBS Fender are floating around out there.

Update: Sharp hit us back with some revised information, so we've changed the post slightly.

With the likes of SanDisk, OCZ Technology and RunCore (just to name a few) already grabbing a foothold in the mini SSD market, you just knew that Samsung couldn't sit around and watch an opportunity pass it by. Now, the company's is branching out from its vivaciously colored Mini S2 HDDs to introduce a new SATA-interface mini-card solid state drive. The diminutive drive is aimed squarely at the netbook crowd, but its size makes it a beautiful candidate for a UMPC, MID or smartbook upgrade. In fact, the drive checks in at some 80 percent smaller than the average 2.5-inch HDD, and it'll be made available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB densities. We're told to expect respectable transfer rates of 200MBps (down) and 100MBps (up), while power consumption sits at just 0.3 watts. Look for these to pop up in your next favorite mobile device late this year or in early 2010.

[Via HotHardware]

Chalk up another huge win for Samsung in its long-running patent dispute with Sharp: the US International Trade Commission has just issued a ruling banning importation of Sharp LCD panels that infringe one of Samsung's viewing-angle patents. As you might imagine, the ban covers a wide swath of Sharp's consumer products, including the Aquos TV line, but it's not clear on how it'll affect other companies that use Sharp panels -- this ruling could potentially have a huge impact on the entire tech market. On the other hand, we'd bet that Sharp's lawyers are furiously putting together a request to have the ban delayed while an appeal is sorted out, so this is far from over -- in fact, we'd say the real fireworks are just beginning.

Samsung's looking to update its original P400 pocket imager with the P410m. Other than pumping out 170 lumens off a 30,000 hour LED to the P400's 151 lumens, the P410M looks like the same 800 x 600 pixel DLP beamer with 1,000:1 contrast first spotted at CES back in January 2008. But hey, brighter is better especially in this milquetoast-class of ultra-portable projectors.

[Via Slashgear]

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Samsung's SMX-C14, with its "ergonomic" design, touch of color, and Active Angle Lens, stole our hearts the moment we saw it. Learning that it only shoots 720 x 480/60i video was like a slap in the face, but we'd forgive it if only it graced us and our retailers with its presence. Sadly we're still left wanting, with the camcorder giving all its love and availability to lucky Koreans, who can pick one up today for the price of 399,000 won -- about $314. There it's apparently destined to "travel around to filming sex" according to the press release at the read link, which seems boastful, but surely it'll find time for those of us elsewhere in the world... eventually.

Update: We received a note from Samsung urging us to pass along the correct translation of the press page, which is, of course, a lot less racy than Google Translate made it sound. It should read: "The biggest advantage of the camcorder is its portability. Put it in your pocket, film video, whenever, wherever you go." If wherever you go happens to be to the Red Light district more power to you, but be sure that Sammy doesn't condone or recommend such behavior.

We've been hearing about the Samsung Blue Earth -- an eco-phone, if you will -- since way back at MWC. Now CNET's finally gotten its hands on one at CommunicAsia in Singapore, and we have to say that we're pretty intrigued with what we're seeing. The back of the phone is covered with a solar panel, and Samsung says that one hour of sunning time for the mobile equals about 10 minutes of talk time. The handset also has a built-in pedometer to count steps for the Eco Walk carbon footprint app -- certainly something prospective buyers of the Blue Earth might be interested in. We still don't know full specs, pricing or availability for the phone, but we'll let you know when we do. Hit the read link for a video.

When the Jasper motherboards started showing up in Xbox 360 consoles late last year there was reason for excitement -- quieter fans, more efficient design, and 256MB of internal storage to set gamers free of overpriced memory cards. Now the systems are receiving an unannounced storage boost, with an XboxHacker forum member braza noticing that his Japanese Arcade model sported a 4GB 4Gb Samsung NAND chip. That's twice the size of the old one, giving the equivalent of a 512MB internal memory unit. That first system was manufactured in April, and they're starting to hit US Arcade units as well. As of now we're not sure if there's a way to tell from outside the box whether you have this beefier revision of Jasper, but we're sure your local retailer wouldn't mind if you just bought their entire stock of consoles and ripped them all open to see.

Update: Oops, that's a 4Gb (gigabits) NAND chip, allowing for roughly 512MB (megabytes) of internal storage.

Samsung just pulled a bit of a "Samsung" and completely blew out its Omnia lineup. We just got some face time with the new Omnia II, Omnia Pro, Omnia Lite and the Omnia-inspired Jet, along with the Pixon 12 -- which runs the same in-house Samsung OS as the Jet, but packs a 12 megapixel camera. It's hard not to notice the stunning AMOLED screens on these phones, especially up against the dull-by-comparison Omnia Lite with its petty LCD. Unfortunately, while the build quality is good and the specs are certainly all there, all the phones were fairly slow in regular operation. The Jet and Pixon were passable (and the Jet certainly ought to be, with an 800MHz "application processor"), but we can't imagine anybody finding any pleasure in the molasses Windows Mobile 6.1 experiences on the Omnia trio. The Jet has a fun little 3D UI "cube" gimmick, which involves the pointless spinning of a cube to access different media apps, but most of what we saw was pretty standard TouchWiz. We did like the speed of Pixon's camera, which does a Pre-style trick of sending photo processing duties to the background so you can snap another photo with little delay in between -- it's also pretty good at auto focus and color accuracy for a phone, but we won't be trading in our regular point and shoot in the near term. None of the phones we looked at had network access, so we weren't able to test out the WebKit browsers, but it sounds like a major win for the Jet and Pixon. Let's just work on that Omnia responsiveness a bit, yeah Samsung? Perhaps Windows Mobile 6.5 (the Omnia II and Omnia Pro are 6.5-ready) will help.

Update: we added a video of the Omnia II and Omnia Pro after the break!