June 17 - 9:00am EDT   LG today said it now plans to ship a 15-inch OLED TV sometime between December this year and January 2010. The screen, which may be made for a third-party instead of LG itself, should ship first to Korea but will be available in other countries soon afterwards. Its specifications haven't been made firm by LG VP of OLED sales Won Kim but, according to an interview with OLED-Info, will likely involve a higher resolution than the 960x540 (quarter HD) Sony XEL-1, which so far is the only commercially available stand-alone OLED display. [full story]

June 15 - 12:45pm EDT   As a final addition to its Omnia phone line, Samsung today put the Omnia LITE into its roster. The handset is the least expensive of the new generation and does so by using a 3-megapixel camera as well as a slightly smaller touchscreen; it's not known what resolution it uses or whether it's LCD or OLED, though the former is more likely in the name of price.. Cellular data over 3G as well as GPS and Wi-Fi still make their way to the device. [full story]

June 15 - 11:35am EDT   Samsung used its smartphone introductions today to reveal the Omnia 2 as Verizon's newest and most capable Windows Mobile device. The phone centers on a very large 3.7-inch, 800x480 AMOLED touchscreen that uses a new approach to resistive touchscreens, dubbed R Touch, that makes them more accurate and sensitive without having to use more advanced capacitive displays. Accordingly, it can both record and play back 480p video from its 5-megapixel camera without losing detail on screen. [full story]

June 15 - 7:40am EDT   As part of launching a suite of existing phones in its native Korea, Samsung on Monday launched the B7610. The handset is arguably its new flagship with a 3.5-inch, 800x480 AMOLED touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard underneath. It also gets a 5-megapixel camera, 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi and has a simplified front interface designed for finger input. Although just 1GB of storage is built-in, it has a microSDHC slot for 16GB or more of added space. [full story]

June 1 - 8:15am EDT   Samsung's Mobile Display group has unveiled a new display likely to improve the quality of touchscreen smartphones. The 800x480 AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen has the resolution of the latest mobile LCDs but is far more color-rich, thinner and power-efficient. Despite the resolution increase, the panel actually increases brightness to 350 candelas and consumes 40 percent less power than an earlier 400x240 AMOLED display. [full story]

May 22 - 10:25am EDT   A leak today has revealed that Hitachi is planning the imminent launch of only the second phone to record HD video after Samsung's Omnia HD. Named in the brochure as the Hi-Vision Cam Wooo, the thin swivel phone found by Engadget would have a 5-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video along with face detection. It would also get HDMI video output and a microSDHC slot that, with an 8GB card, could hold 2 hours of footage. [full story]

April 27 - 10:10am EDT   An Italian rmor from this weekend claims that Samsung is developing a new, flagship Omnia that would significantly improve on even the i8910, which itself was originally named the Omnia HD. Supposedly titled the Omnia Pro, the new model would get a 3.5-inch, 480x800 AMOLED screen but would also be the first Omnia with a hardware QWERTY keyboard, sliding out from underneath the screen. It would still have a 5-megapixel camera and would get a fast 624MHz processor. [full story]

April 17 - 8:10am EDT   Nokia may give the 5800 XpressMusic and more of its phones an upgrade to a capacitive touchscreen, tips from Taiwan's phone part makers would claim. Although Nokia built the 5800 around a resistive touchscreen, which requires pressure and is sometimes better-suited to a stylus than finger input, the company has supposedly ordered a switch to capacitive screens with the explicit goal of rivaling the responsiveness of Apple's iPhone and newer Korean phones like the LG Arena or Samsung's i8910 (Omnia HD). About 2 million of the upgraded phones would be shipped between May and June based on these plans. [full story]

April 7 - 5:00pm EDT   Canada's Telus is now offering the Palm Treo Pro smartphone, the handset maker announced on Monday, and has also recently added the Samsung Omnia handset to its lineup. The Treo Pro is being touted as an ideal handset for business professionals, as the 320x320 pixel touchscreen-and-QWERTY handset runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, has integrated Wi-Fi and 3G data network support through EVDO. Its keyboard has dedicated shortcut keys to the e-mail client and calendar. [full story]

February 2 - 5:20pm EST   Rumor has it that Samsung will officially release a 16GB version of its i900 Omnia smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Spain in a couple of weeks. The pictured handset will double the current version's onboard storage space, though other specs and features sound identical. As such, the quad-band GSM phone will run on Windows Mobile 6.1 and connect to HSDPA networks for a maximum data transfer speed of 7.2Mbps. The same 3.2-inch, 240x400 pixel touchscreen remains, along with the familiar 5-megapixel camera with an integrated flash. [full story]

December 1 - 10:05am EST   Verizon on Monday has already dropped the price on the Samsung Omnia less than a week after its introduction. Originally priced at $250 with a contract and a $70 rebate, the device will now cost $200 with the same discount and now almost matches the pricing of both the BlackBerry Storm as well as the iPhone 3G, which has an inferior two-megapixel camera but shares a similar 8GB of built-in storage, 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi. [full story]

November 25 - 9:40am EST   Verizon on Tuesday became the first American carrier to offer the Samsung Omnia. The company's second full touchscreen smartphone in as many weeks, the Americanized edition of the Omnia adds a new, customized version of Samsung's TouchWiz interface to Windows Mobile 6.1 that lets users quickly check informational widgets and change core settings without leaving the home screen. It also brings VZ Navigator as an option for the phone's native GPS and the VZAppZone as a portal for downloading third-party native apps. [full story]

November 6 - 3:45pm EST   A Thursday report confirms several Samsung handsets will soon be shipping to various wireless providers, including the long-awaited Omnia i910 smartphone coming to Verizon. Along with the Saga i770, it will use Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system, with a Renown U810 flip phone also joining the Verizon offerings. The Omnia should share the GSM original's five-megapixel camera, GPS and Wi-Fi but may not have the T*Omnia's higher-resolution display. [full story]

November 5 - 7:45am EST   Samsung has only just introduced the T*Omnia in its home country but may already be enroute to the US within a matter of weeks, a claim from BusinessWeek. The company is reportedly in talks to bring the Windows Mobile touchscreen phone with an unspecified US carrier by the end of November, though whether it represents the fully-upgraded T*Omnia or its lower-resolution, lower-capacity ancestor is unknown. [full story]

November 3 - 10:20am EST   Samsung today stepped up the quality of its flagship smartphone with the launch of the T*Omnia. A major upgrade to the original model released just in mid-year, the new version carries a slightly larger 3.3-inch LCD but with a much higher 800x480 resolution versus the earlier 400x200. The extra resolution helps both with Windows Mobile as well as with a new DMB TV tuner that gives it over-the-air digital TV in its native Korea. The size has increased slightly to fit the new display and hardware. [full story]