This spring, Samsung introduced the Samsung Galaxy S, a super Android smartphone to rival the HTC EVO 4G, the various Droids (both Motorola's and HTC's) and of course, the iPhone 4. Versions of the Galaxy S will be making its way to U.S. shores this summer in four different form factors to all four major U.S. carriers. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the original European Galaxy S and did some quick side-by-side comparisons with the other hot phones of the summer.

Design and Display

Samsung announced a new netbook model today in the N230. At first blush, it doesn't seem like anything particularly special: a 10.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 by 600, Intel Atom N450 or N470 CPU, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a weight of around 2.2 pounds. The eye-catching part is the company's claim that this netbook will last for 13.5 hours on a single charge. How is it achieving such astounding battery life from a regular Windows-running netbook? Samsung talks about their efficient LED display and "proprietary Enhanced Battery Life (EBL) solutions" in its press release, but upon closer examination we can see what's really going on...

The N230 netbook has a high, but not especially amazing, battery life of 7 hours with the standard battery. The 13.5 hour claim comes when you use the optional 65 watt-hour long-life battery. Samsung doesn't say exactly what this battery will do to the netbook's bulk or weight. Still, this is an impressive feat, if the real battery life is anywhere close to Samsung's claims. We have tested netbooks with extended batteries before, and none have quite come close to that sort of runtime. Then again, we often find the battery life claims of manufacturers to be a bit...optimistic...compared to our lab tests.

It happened to me on my first phone call with the new Apple iPhone 4: The display screen flashed on during the call, and I managed to inadvertently put the call onto speaker. Twice.

Now, I could crack a joke about having a talented cheek, but this isn't a joking matter: I never had these problems with my iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS. I didn't feel as if I was holding the phone any differently; I even paid close attention over the course of subsequent e-mails, and confirmed I wasn't doing anything different.

Back in early May, we wrote about the slew of new notebooks announced by HP. Some lines received bigger updates than others, but one of my favorites of the bunch was the Envy 14. Set to replace the end-of-life Envy 13, the new Envy notebooks clearly take their visual cues from Apple's MacBook Pro line. The new Envys are not only slick and pretty, but sport some pretty great hardware. Though the entry price of $1,099 for the 14-inch model is a little hard to swallow in a market where everyone wants a $599 notebook that does everything, it's worth noting that you get a lot more bang for the buck,hardware-wise, than a comparable MacBook Pro.

Consider that the 13" MacBook Pro starts at $1,199. For that extra $100, you get a similar CPU (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo compared to the 2.4 GHz Core i3-370M in the Envy 14), equal RAM (4GB), a smaller hard drive (250GB vs. 320GB), and quite inferior graphics (GeForce 320M with 256MB of shared memory vs. Mobility Radeon 5650 with 1GB dedicated graphics memory). Oh, and the Envy has a higher-res screen as well (1600x900 vs. 1280x800), but then again, it's a little bit bigger. Choose enough upgrades to boost the price to the next-best MacBook Pro (the $1,499 13-inch model) and the difference in specs tilts even more heavily in the Envy 14's favor.

[Updated 06/11/10, see below]

Dr. Raymond Soneira runs DisplayMate Technologies, which makes software to test display quality. He has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University, and was a Long-Term Member of the Einstein Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. (Read Dr. Soneira's Bio.) He also knows more about digital displays than just about anyone I know - and I know some pretty tech-savvy folks. This morning, Dr. Soneira shot me an interesting email regarding the so-called "Retina Display" of the iPhone 4. To clarify: a retina display is one whose resolution meets or exceeds the maximum resolution the human retina is capable of resolving, assuming perfect vision.

Few gaming laptops have charmed us as much as the Alienware M11x. It's a bit bulky compared to other 11.6-inch ultraportable laptops, but absolutely tiny compared to most laptops designed for gaming. It's overclocked Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor and GeForce 335M mobile graphics chip give it the muscle needed to truly play all the latest games at high settings. With most notebooks that size, you have to turn the settings down pretty far to get decent performance. The big eight-cell prismatic battery gives it over 7 hours of working time in our tests, as long as you flip the switchable graphics over to the Intel integrated GPU.

Now, our favorite ultraportable gaming machine is getting even better. Starting later this month, the M11x will swap out the Core 2 Duo processor in favor of ultra-low voltage versions of Intel's Core i5 and Core i7. These chips won't have their default clock speeds raised, as the current version does, but these CPUs feature Intel's Turbo Boost technology that automatically overclocks the chips in certain situations. Alienware representatives tell us to expect a significant performance increase. Battery life should range from "the same" to "maybe 15 or 20 minutes less", depending on how you use the system.

The mobile payments race has heated up with the announcement by BOKU of its new Paymo in-app mobile payment service for Android smartphones. Paymo allows developers to easily incorporate an payment API into apps which charges purchases directly to the phone user's mobile carrier account. These purchases, such as a subscription renewal or new levels in a game, will show up as items on the user's monthly phone bill.

Paymo even works with prepaid and unlocked phones. It deducts charges from the prepaid balance, and if funds are insufficient the purchase will simply be declined. This opens up a whole new revenue source for app developers, as the Paymo system does not require the purchaser to have a contract or a credit card.

Last week, I joined what must be millions of other technology nerds (if my Twitter and Facebook friends are any indication) in getting rid of my iPhone 3G* in favor of an Android-based phone. Why on earth would I do such a thing? Aren't iPhones basically the best smartphones on the market? Increasingly, I'm not sure that's the case. Besides, it's not simply about overall phone quality.

The reasons I switched closely mirror those than Daniel Lyons outlined in his piece at Newsweek. Here's the breakdown of the reasons I jumped ship, and why I think many formerly loyal iPhone users might be jumping ship, too.

Intel has officially launched Ultra-Low Voltage (ULV) processors in the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 product families today. The company claims the chips offer up to 32% better performance than the comparable ULV processors in the Core 2 family, popular in many ultraportable PCs. At the same time, power usage is reduced by a promised 15%, again relative to the company's current ULV products.

The branding gets a little confusing at this point. The Core i5-520UM, for example, runs at 1.066 GHz and carries at TDP (thermal design power) of just 18 watts. The Core i7-640UM runs at 1.2GHz, and like many other mobile Core i7 processors, has two cores. It may be a little confusing for consumers to see Core i7 in the specs of one laptop which is significantly less powerful than a Core i5, simply because the Core i7 is the ULV version and the Core i5 is not (standard Core i5 mobile processors run up to 2.53GHz). Note that the ULV Core i3, i5, and i7 mobile processors only officially support DDR3 at speeds up to 800MHz, while the standard versions also support 1066MHz DDR3 memory, so there could be a significant difference in memory bandwidth as well.

I got an advance look at Google's latest treat for Android phones, Android 2.2 (more deliciously known as Froyo) on the Nexus One. Announced this morning at Google I/O in San Francisco, the update will initially be available to Motorola Droid and Nexus One owners in June. Android users will definitely be happy with this update, which delivers faster performance, tethering/mobile hotspot and of course, Flash support.

Flash Player 10.1: Great for Watching Video

When you mention Lenovo, you usually call to mind business-oriented laptops. The ThinkPad and IdeaPad lines have been staples of the business traveler - simple, black, and sort of boring, but priced right and very easy to work on. We haven't met a Lenovo keyboard or touchpad we didn't like. But a Lenovo laptop for media-minded consumers? Even for gamers? Surely that's heresy, right?

Today, Lenovo has made available the IdeaPad Y560, a product that might just get general consumers, and even gamers, to reconsider the brand. It has a slicker industrial design, with red accents and a textured lid, but it's what's inside that really has me intrigued. The entry-level model features a Core i3 330M CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a quite capable Radeon Mobility HD 5730 discrete graphics chip with 1GB of video RAM. Not bad for under $1,000. You can step up to Core i5 dual-core and Core i7 quad-core CPUs from there, or add bigger 500GB 7200 RPM hard drives if you're wiling to spend $1,299. The top-end model boost the RAM to 8GB and is a bit pricey at $1,599.

We've been pretty big fans of Nvidia's Ion product for netbooks, which turbocharges the lame integrated graphics found in Intel's Atom line with something really capable of decoding all that hi-def flash video on the web and even playing a few basic 3D games. If you'll recall, the previous generation of Intel Atom based netbooks were three-chip solutions: you had the Atom CPU, the "North Bridge" containing the memory controller and integrated graphics, and the "South Bridge" with all the I/O and interconnect stuff. The Ion platform replaced both the North Bridge and South Bridge with what Nvidia calls an MCP - media and communcations processor. It's basically a single chip that includes the memory controller, I/O, and integrated graphics. In other words, the original Ion brought the three-chip Atom solution from Intel down to a two-chip solution, while improving graphics performance. It was a major selling point.

The Next Generation Ion, revealed today, sort of makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, not because it's a bad products, but because the marketing message isn't clear to consumers. It's no longer a "platform" - it's an add-on to an existing platform in the same way that any GeForce discrete graphics chip is an add-on to any notebook of any other size. It's just... GeForce for netbooks. For this and other reasons, the whole marketing message around the Next-Gen Ion is a little worrisome. Allow me to explain.