The CCDs (Charge Coupled Devices) currently used in digital cameras could soon be phased out if Samsung is successful with its new CMOS image sensor (CIS), which is the smallest in the world. The new sensor is capable of 8.4 megapixels and provides a signal to noise ratio comparable to current CCDs, giving good image quality for photographic purposes. Because it only uses a tenth of the power currently required for CCDs, it should quickly find its way into digital cameras and camcorders, along with mobile camera phones. Samsung has been investing a lot of money into improving its CIS technology as it aims to become more competitive, and its 8.4Mp offering should be available later this year.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., announced at its annual Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei that it has developed a 1.8"-type 64 Gigabyte (GB) flash-solid state drive (SSD). The new flash-SSD is based on an eight gigabit (Gb) single-level-cell (SLC) NAND, which provides significantly higher performance over conventional SSDs. The read and write performance of the new SLC flash-SSD have been increased by 20 percent and 60 percent respectively over the 32GB flash-SSD Samsung introduced last year, meaning that the new SSD's ability to outperform conventional rotating-media hard drives is even greater than had been anticipated.

During the ongoing CeBIT show in Hannover, Samsung Electronics is introducing a 30-inch LCD monitor that incorporates an LED as the backlight source. Featuring a 123% color production, 3000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 2ms response time and viewing angle of 170 degrees, this monitor has the perfect specs. The SyncMaster XL30 will come equipped with "Eyeone Design & Eyeone Photo" and "Natural Color Expert" software. Various input terminals such as USB terminal, DVI-D are available and the 30-inch monitor also features HDCP for viewing high-definition (HD) contents via DVI ports. At the show, Samsung is also launching the 19-inch SyncMaster 940UX LCD monitor we told you about earlier this year, that can be connected using only an USB port.

After Intel, Samsung, Seagate and Sandisk there is a new competitor in the Solid State Disk Business: Super Talent. In April they will start selling 1.8" (up to 32GB), 2.5" (up to 64GB) and even 3.5" models (max. 128GB). The prices are still not known but all versions will have a SATA interface.

Samsung Electronics, announced today that it has begun shipping samples of an eight gigabyte (GB) memory chip to major mobile electronics manufacturers - the highest density embedded flash memory developed to date. Samsung's high-density moviNAND memory solution consists of four 50-nanometer, 16Gigabit NAND flash memories, a high-speed MultiMediaCard (MMC) controller and associated firmware. It can store up to 2,000 songs or enough map data to implement global positioning system (GPS) and points of interest for the entire western world. In addition, it can also be used with removable media cards to permit virtually unlimited memory expansion.

Samsung has started shipping hybrid hard drives with 128 or 256MB flash memory to OEMs. The drive is available in 80, 120 or 160GB with 5400RPM and SATA interface. It should be available to retail shortly. These drives will become mandatory for Vista certification in June 2007, so expect all the major companies to feature such hard drives in their notebooks soon.

Samsung has been seen before as an official maker of Blu-ray hardware, and a supporter of the standard. So their announcement of an HD-DVD laptop took a lot of people by surprise. The Samsung M55 features a 17" widescreen capable of an impressive 1920x1200 resolution (more than enough for 1080p HD DVD's), powered by an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB GDDR3 graphics memory. The laptop also carries an HD-DVD player (of course), 2GB of DDR2 667 system RAM, a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, a 120GB hard drive, and support for all wireless standards, excluding 802.11N. All this is run with the help of Windows Vista Home Premium. The laptop will go on sale in Korea for KRW3m ($3,186/£1,627/€2,419).

Seoul, Korea - March 1, 2007: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 1Gigabit (Gb) DDR2 DRAM (dynamic random access memory) using 60 nanometer (nm)-class process technology.

The current record holder for the world's thinnest LCD screen is Samsung Electronics, with its screen being just 0.82mm thick. However, that is soon about to change as subsidiary company Samsung SDI is planning to produce a new LCD which will be a mere 0.74mm, easily enough to push its parent company into the number two slot. Although the new screen hasn't got beyond the prototype design stage yet, once it is released it could help to make the next generation of mobiles that little bit thinner. The thinnest LCD screen in mass production will soon become Samsungs 1.9mm offering, which should be available in handsets during spring, so phones sporting these sub-1mm screens could take some time to appear on shelves.

Samsung will unveil a new LCD that can be connected to a PC via an integrated USB port, according to an article published at heise.de. When connected to a PC via USB 2.0, the 19" Syncmaster 940UX using PVA panel and 1280x1024 standard resolution, appears as a removable storage device in Windows, which contains a setup routine that installs a virtual graphics card as well as a USB display driver. While a USB-connected LCD cannot be used as primary monitor, the new approach allows users to connect up to six LCDs (and up to three virtual graphics cards) as extended monitors to their PC. Unfortunately connecting multiple displays to USB ports is highly CPU dependent, and Samsung recommends a dual-core processor with a clock speed of at least 2 GHz. The Samsung 940UX could become available during the first half of 2007 and should cost less than 430 Euros (about $560).

Samsung Touts 4 GHz Memory for Graphics Cards

Getting more speed is always nice - and Samsung is about to break the speed barrier yet again, pushing GDDR4 chips to 4 GHz and beyond. At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Samsung presented its new GDDR4 memory chips that operate at about 40% higher speed than GDDR4 was initially estimated to, but use more power.

4 GHz GDDR4 memory chips are only "available" in 512 MB capacities and were manufactured using 80 nm process technology. They were designed for a power supply voltage of 1.4 V - 2.1 V, reports PC Watch web-site. The data rate of 4 Gb/s (4 gigabit per second, or 4 GHz) was achieved with devices operating at 2.0 V, which is higher than Samsung's current-generation GDDR4 chips that can function at up to 1.9 V officially.

GDDR4 memory at 4.0 GHz delivers bandwidth of 16 GB/s and if such chips were used in today's graphics cards that have 256-bit memory bus, this would result in peak data bandwidth of 128 GB/s, two times more than the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX (the only graphics card on the market that uses GDDR4) can offer. For tomorrow's graphics boards that will have 512-bit memory access Samsung's new chips would give peak memory bandwidth of 256 GB/s, which is nearly three times more than 86.4 GB/s that the currently highest-performance graphics card - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX - has.

Are we beginning to enter the era when GPU memory will be clocked many times higher than our CPUs?

Samsung Electronics Ltd., has introduced the world's first 1.8-inch hard drive with a 60GB per disk capacity and a super-slim form factor that is just 5-millimeters tall. Samsung's sleek new 1.8-inch N-series features 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB per disk capacities - the largest one-disk storage capacity offered by any drive on the market today. The new slim hard drive spins at 4200 rpm and according to Samsung is "among the quietest on the market today". The power consumption of the drive is rated at 0.3 watts in idle mode. Samsung's 1.8-inch N-series is currently shipping.

Samsung Electronics said it is aiming for stronger growth in its large-size panel shipments in 2007 compared to the overall panel industry. The company also said it is unlikely that large-size panel prices will undergo a significant price reduction during the year. The Korea-based company said its large-size panel shipments will grow 24% from 55.5 million units in 2006 to 68.9 million in 2007 while growth of global shipments will likely reach 22%, from 266 million to 324 million. The strong shipment growth will be mostly driven by a continued stress on larger-size panels and high value-added ones, the maker said. Read the full story here.

Samsung is clearly going after the iPod Nano with the Samsung K3. It is just 7 mm thick, sports a 1.8 inch OLED screen and blue, touch sensitive controls. The battery life is quite similar to the Nano as well - 25 hours.

There will also be a new Bluetooth enabled multimedia player which can handle a range of audio, video and photo formats and also play Flash games. It will last about 30 hours on a single charge for music and 6 hours for videos.

Samsung has announced six brand new LCD displays. First up is the 24-inch SyncMaster 245T with 3000:1 contrast ratio, 1920 x 1200 resolution, and an 80mm stand with tilt and swivel. It will be available in March priced at $799.99. There's also new 27-inch 275T model with 1920 x 1200 resolution which will be available in February at a price point of $999.99. It uses the new 8 bit widescreen S-PVA Samsung LTM270M1 panel. Next up is the announcement of the US availability of the 19-inch SyncMaster 932B with 700:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time, 1280 x 1024 resolution and Windows Vista certification. This model will be available in February for $249.99. Samsung has also revealed the existence of the 19-inch SyncMaster 906BW which will be launched at the same time as the 20- and 22-inch 206BW and 226BW become available in the US. These models will be put on sale in February priced at $279.99, $349.99, and $429.99, respectively. Similar to the 245 and 275T, this range also features the same 3000:1 contrast ratio, and 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio.

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has created the first LCD panel that can produce independent images on each side of a mobile LCD display. Samsung's new double-sided LCD can show two entirely different pictures or sets of visual data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen. Other conventional double-sided LCDs can only show a reverse image of the same video data. This new development will replace two display panels with one, thereby reducing overall thickness of mobile products by at least 1mm. The new double-sided LCD is 2.6mm thick and 2.22" wide, with QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) resolution. It has brightness values of 250 nits for the front and 100 nits for the rear display and needs only one backlight for proper operation. The new Samsung double-sided LCD will be exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens in Las Vegas on January 8.

A U.S. research institute has sued Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Matsushita-owned Panasonic for violating a patent for Bluetooth technology, potentially putting the free wireless standard at risk. The Washington Research Foundation, which markets technology from the University of Washington, is seeking damages from the three mobile-phone makers for using a radio frequency receiver technology without paying royalties, according to court papers obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. Nokia, Samsung and Panasonic declined to comment the story.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, announced that it is now sampling its 16-gigabit(Gb) NAND flash memory with customers - the first NAND flash using 50 nanometer(nm) process technology. The first samples of this high density NAND flash memory have a multi-level cell(MLC) design with a 4Kbyte(KB) page size to enhance both its read and write features. The new 4KB page function improves the conventional 2KB paging system for MLC NAND flash to double the read speed, while increasing write performance 150%.

Samsung Electronics has developed a docking station containing a 1200-watt-hour fuel cell, which is capable of powering a laptop for an enormous length of time. Designed for Samsung's Q35 ultra portable notebook, this dock can potentially power the machine for eight hours a day, five days a week for one month. The company is now working on a miniature version to provide 15 hours of power. This dock should hit the shops towards the end of 2007.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced that it has developed a prototype fusion memory chip that can significantly increase the data processing speed between processors in mobile applications. Samsung's new fusion solution OneDRAM is expected to be specified in the design of handsets, game consoles and in other digital applications, especially those that use 3-dimensional graphics.

Maybe someone can remember how we told you that Microsoft Vista will boost the adoption of SATA optical drives very soon. Today Samsung is about to proof that with the introduction of its new WriteMaster SH-S183L: the first 18X Serial ATA DVD burner on the market today. With its SATA interface, the SH-S183L eliminates the need for Master/Slave jumper settings and provides thinner data cables, improving airflow and cable routing. The SH-S183L offers transfer rates of 150MB/s, 300MB/s and 600MB/s, making it one of the fastest drives on the market today. The drive also integrates Lightscribe technology, which enables users to print images onto the surface of a DVD. The SH-S183L is shipping nationwide with an Estimated Street Price of $89.99.

Samsung released a trio of very nice media phones. The Ultra Music F300, the Ultra Video F500 and the Ultra Messaging i600 are each branded according to their designed use. The F300 and F500 are tri-band devices.The F300 ships with a touch sensitive 2.1in, 176 x 220 screen with 262,144 colors. It also supports Bluetooth 2.0 stereo audio (A2DP), a wide variety of music formats, and FM radio. The F300 has 100MB of onboard memory and can get more through MicroSD cards.

The F500 comes with a 2.4in, 240 x 320 display, a sliding keypad and can handle all sorts of music/video formats. It has 400MB of on-board memory, and can handle more through MicroSD cards.

The F600 is more like a PDA then a phone, comes with a 2.3in, 320 x 240, 65,536 color screen and a QWERTY keyboard. It also comes with 64MB of RAM, 128MB of Flash ROM, a camera that supports video conferencing, wireless connectivity (wifi, Bluetooth 2 and A2DP), and runs it all using Windows Mobile 5.0.

Executives at Samsung Electronics recently said the company has signed a long-term contract with Dell for 27-inch widescreen LCD monitor panels, according to DigiTimes. Samsung is the only panel supplier of 27-inch widescreen LCD monitor panels at present. The company currently only supplies one kind of 27-inch LCD monitor panels, LTM270M1. The panel features resolution of 1,920×1,200 (WUXGA), response time of 6ms, contrast ratio of 3,000:1 and brightness of 500 nits. Samsung and Dell both will launch new 27-inch LCD monitors in January 2007.