The action on the Santa Rosa front continues to heat up as details about Samsung's Aura Q45 leak out. The 12.1-inch little monster, which we first spotted in concept form at CeBIT, sports a 1.8GHz Intel T7100 Core 2 Duo on an 800MHz bus with a 128MB NVIDIA Geforce Go 8400M powering a 1,280 x 800 screen. No word on that oh-so-hot integrated HSDPA / WiBRO modem or the built-in DMB tuner on Sammy's CeBIT concept, but the 1.3 megapixel webcam and the multiformat memory card reader seem to have made the cut. The Q45 is expected to drop in Europe "shortly" for €1,159 ($1,578) -- not bad, not bad at all.

[Via Electronista]

Samsung looks to have suddenly found itself in a branding mood, with the company set to introduce a whole new line of laptops under the "Aura" banner next week, beginning with the Aura R20 (pictured above). From the looks of it, the new line is definitely out to impress, with a slimline design and that glossy black finish people can't seem to get enough of these days. Matching R20's good looks are its specs, with a 14.1-inch widescreen display, a Core 2 Duo T7400 processor on the top end, up to 4GB of RAM, a max 160GB hard drive, and ATI's new Radeon Xpress 1250 Hyper Memory graphics chip, as well as a DVD burner, and the usual built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll have to wait 'till the official announcement for pricing and availability details, but you can check out a couple more shots of it after the break.

[Via Laptoping]

Ahh, to be an industrial concept designer, free of the binding chains we call "reality." You know -- absolute limits of technological advancement, laws of physics, corporate red tape, and the like. Must be nice, right? You can go ahead and design a phone for yourself (or even better, for ASUS) that meets virtually every dreamy spec requirement you can conjure. Go ahead, drop a 3.9-inch touch screen that eats up the entire surface of that bad boy. While you're at it, throw in a sliding d-pad bar that can be positioned anywhere along the screen. Oh, and don't forget the HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, and microSD expansion, all in a 6mm thick shell that magically reveals a full keyboard stowed in a slot along the left edge. And yes, that's a full 0.1 millimeter thicker than Samsung's Ultra Edition 5.9, but don't even think about drawing a comparison (except for the fact that the Samsung actually exists, we suppose).

[Via Mobile-review and Unwired View, thanks Staska]