New Samsung YP-R0 outed, not exactly groundbreaking

In the vein of the previous yawnfest, the YP-R1, Samsung's apparently got this baby -- the YP-R0 -- on the decks as well. Maybe it's just the naming scheme that bores us -- after all, it's not a bad-looking slim little device, with a 2.6-inch touchscreen display, and this model will supposedly house 8GB of storage, an RDS FM tuner, a microphone, plus a microSD card slot. It'll support a host of formats, including MP3, OGG, WMA, ASF, FLAC, WAV, AAC, MPEG4, WMV, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and GIF -- just to name a few. The whole thing weighs in at about 60 grams, and is expected to run about €130 (about $183) when it is made available, though we don't know yet when that will be. There's one more shot after the break.

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New Samsung Solstice for AT&T spotted on official site, coming in at $99.99 next week?

Remember that midrange full-touch Samsung Infinity that was rumored for AT&T a while back? It looks like the stars are aligning for a model called the Solstice to be launching on the carrier in the next few days -- and it looks (and sounds) suspiciously like what we'd all expected out of the Infinity. Basically, this looks to be Sammy's mainstream touch offering for AT&T, with a relatively meager 2 megapixel cam, QVGA display, dual-band 3G, and not a whole heck of a lot else. The good news is that you should be getting a good deal in exchange for the light spec sheet -- Boy Genius Report has the Solstice launching this coming Sunday, August 2 for $99.99 on contract. Coincidentally, Samsung's official product directory conspicuously shows a Solstice off in the distance of its page banner, so yeah, this thing is definitely happening one way or another -- only question is whether we've got the specs, pricing, and launch date all nailed.

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with the SNE-50K, Samsung jumps into e-book reader game

Samsung's announced it's jumping into the best game in town -- the paperless book trade -- with its SNE-50K e-book reader. With 512MB of onboard storage, a five-inch touchscreen and stylus, and a complete lack of wireless or internet capabilities, it's not the most advanced reader we've ever seen, but it's slim and light, at nine millimeters thick and weighing about 6.5 ounces. In South Korea, where the reader will be launched first, Samsung has partnered with Kyobo Bookstore, one of the largest booksellers in the country. There's no word on launches outside of South Korea at this time, but Samsung does plan on showing a prototypes for other countries at a trade show in January (most likely CES).

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Update : Samsung announces world's fastest Cortex A8 core

Some of the most advanced mobile devices on the market today are built around cores based on ARM's Cortex A8 architecture, including a couple you may be familiar with: the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS. The 3GS, for example, runs a Samsung S5PC100 system-on-chip clipping along at a healthy 600MHz, enough to make it noticeably snappier than the 3G it replaces -- but time marches relentlessly forward, as always, and that S5PC100 is suddenly starting to look a little long in the tooth with today's news. Sammy has partnered up with silicon design firm Intrinsity to develop what it's billing as the world's fastest Cortex A8 core, a 1GHz unit codenamed "Hummingbird" that's based on 45nm manufacturing techniques and can deliver peak performance at a single volt with power consumption characteristics favorable for mobile use. Translation: this thing should be nipping at the heels of Snapdragon once Samsung finishes up work turning this core into a system-on-chip that can be sourced by manufacturers, and it should do so without causing batteries to beg for mercy. Unfortunately, there's no word just yet on exactly when we'll see phones running this setup in the market, so Pre, 3GS, you're safe for now -- but the clock's ticking.

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Preview : Samsung's Omnia Pro B7610

Samsung's recently-announced Omnia Pro B7610 seems like a sweet hunk of Windows Mobile love -- especially if you're cross-shopping it with the Touch Pro2 -- but is there more than meets the eye? GSMArena recently put a prerelease unit through its paces, and it's not a perfect situation by any stretch; first off, apparently not very pretty in the flesh, owing in part to its girth and in part to the weird red battery cover. The resistive touchscreen isn't great and the OLED display washes out in sunlight (as they typically do), but on the plus side, the QWERTY keyboard is said to be stellar and it seems that Sammy's done a great job of completely concealing WinMo 6.1's sad, sagging skin with TouchWiz. In the final analysis, the site concludes that the phone easily matches the high bar set by the Touch Pro2 -- strong words considering HTC's market dominance and the fact that we're still looking at a prototype Omnia Pro here, so this should get even more interesting.

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New Samsung Omnia II gets banded for US 3G

Remember how Verizon is getting the Omnia II? Yeah, well, don't get too excited, because this isn't it. A version of Samsung's latest full-touch WinMo superphone just garnered FCC approval, and more excitingly, it packs WCDMA bands II and V -- exactly the bands we use in North America -- but you might notice that there's a surprising dearth of English on the product's certification label. Well, see, it turns out that South America uses those bands, too -- and the "L" in this version's model number of i8000L probably stands for Latin America, if we had to guess. That's not to say savvy North Americans couldn't import this and get some juicy 3G on AT&T or Rogers, but at least in AT&T's case, we still don't have any particular reason to believe that this'll land over there. Certainly wouldn't hurt their case, though, would it?

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