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Samsung Unveils Phone PDA, Media Center

CEO's CES keynote highlights multimedia tools, toys for the networked home.

Douglas F. Gray, IDG News Service

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LAS VEGAS -- Following the home-networking emphasis Microsoft's Bill Gates put on his opening keynote here, Daeje Chin, president and chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics' Digital Media Business unit, announced two upcoming products for the networked home in his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Chin gave the audience a glimpse of the NEXiO, which he termed "a PDA phone converging with a PC," and of a media center for the home.

The NEXiO device, which looks like a handheld PC crossed with a tablet PC, features a 5-inch VGA (800-by-480 pixel) display, a built-in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 module for high-speed wireless voice and data access, and a USB port, according to information from Samsung.

The NEXiO, which runs Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 on Intel's 206 MHz StrongARM processor, features 64MB of Synchronous Dynamic RAM and 32MB of ROM. The NEXiO also includes a handful of applications, among them Pocket Word, a spreadsheet program, and a PowerPoint Viewer. It also comes with voice recording and MP3 playback software.

Additional options include a camera, Global Positioning System (GPS), and wireless LAN modules. The NEXiO will be available "in a few months," Chin said.

Media Center Shown

Chin also demonstrated the Samsung Home Media Center, a box for the living room. Samsung expects the Home Media Center to be available within 12 months, Chin said.

It will contain media files, including digital photos, MP3 audio files, and video, Chin said. The Media Center is designed to also allow users to surf the Internet from the living room and send information to networked displays throughout the home. The device will be able to communicate with analog television sets equipped with an additional digital-to-analog converter, he said.

The Home Media Center will be based on FreeStyle, a technology that was announced by Microsoft's Gates Monday night. The FreeStyle software turns the Windows XP interface into a control panel format that can be operated using a remote control-like gadget. Various icons represent different devices the user can control through the FreeStyle interface.

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