A few steps short of officially launching the Samsung S8500 Wave (the first Samsung phone to carry Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen), the company has released a promo video explaining what’s what regarding the new Super AMOLED display technology. In the interest of giving you the 4-11, here’s the short version: they basically built the touchscreen layer onto the display, eliminating the need for an extra touchscreen layer.

The result? The new “Super AMOLED” screen is said to offer faster response, less reflections, and better colors and contrast even under the sun. It should allow for slim designs too.

As for the S8500, it’ll be Samsung’s first phone to feature the Bada operating system, with a 3.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display, 1GHz processor, 5MP cam, and 3G/HSDPA, Wi-fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity. The screen is pretty much the highlight though, with a nice high-resolution (480 x 800) and contrast, a scratch-resistant surface, multi-touch support, and all the visual goodness that Super AMOLED technology promises.

Source: GSMArena

It’s still an Atom so you shouldn’t expect to to play Left4Dead on a netbook any time soon, but the two cores should at least help with multitasking and multi-thread apps. No word on a release or official announcement yet, but you might want to wait for this one if you’re looking to pick up a new netbook in the near future.

Source: Liliputing

This one’s for you, guitar-player-who-thinks-Rock-Band-is-for-sissies. Game developer Seven45 Studios will be releasing a new Rock Band-type rhythm game called Power Gig: Rise of the SixString for the PS3 and Xbox 360. What’s new? For starters, this game won’t be using fake four-buttoned guitar-looking controllers; your main controller will be a fully functional six-string electric axe that can also work on its own when plugged into an amp.

The guitar controller comes with tech that will recognize your input all along the guitar for various degrees of gameplay difficulty while still packing the necessary innards to work like an actual guitar. Newbies without any actual guitar-playing skills shouldn’t be worried though, since the game is designed to work for casual gamers as well as hardcore rockers. The game offers two modes of play that includes the basic beat-matching style that we all know, but offers an extra mode that lets you switch on chord playing that requires specific chords and finger placements for a little bit of realism. Casual players should be able to pick up a few guitar basics as the game progresses too, so it’s a win-win if you’re in it to learn a few things.

Pricing isn’t available yet, but Power Gig: Rise of the SixString is set for a Q4 2010 release. In the meantime, we’ll be waiting for the other parts to come out for this game, like drum sets and bass guitars. We’re already planning to form a living-room Guns N’ Roses cover band, and we can’t all play as Slash.

Source: Engadget

Fun-fact-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-this-product #3101001:

Slash, the rock icon who played lead guitar for Guns N’ Roses, is mostly known for two things: he played lead guitar for Guns N’ Roses, and he always wore that top hat over his curls. Where did he get the look? He stole the hat, along with a belt, from a street shop then he cut the belt and wrapped it around the hat (he got the curls from genetics). Now you know how to dress up as Slash next Halloween!

We almost forgot that he’s known for one more thing: guitar solos and riffs that are beyond face-melting; it borders on spine-tingling. Just in case you forgot or just didn’t really listen to GN’R, check out the guitar lines on the video below of “Estranged,”  GN’R’s almost-ten-minute song. See if it doesn’t move you. If it doesn’t, you have no soul.

It’s based on an Android 1.5 (cupcake) operating system and a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen that features Motorola’s MOTOBLUR UI to help you get around the phone menus. The specs are rounded out by a 528MHz CPU, 256MB of memory, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 5MP cam.

As is the usual for today’s average smartphone, social networking and entertainment are highlights, with always-on connections to your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts from the home screen, plus access to AT&T’s mobile music service and streaming radio.

Intrigued  with the possibility of owning a back-flipping qwerty smartphone? AT&T is offering it for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a 2-year $30/month contract. If you don’t feel like being tied up, it can be had contract-free for $349.

MSI’s Wind U160 netbook, the 10-inch Pine Trail Atom-powered portable that was listed to run for 10 hours on a charge, is now available. There has been a few changes since it was announced late last year though; the price has gone up from the announced $350 to $380, but the listed battery life has also been upsized from a good 10 hours to an awesome 15-hour runtime.

Of course, that listed battery life depends on what the netbook is running, but even if it’s simply being claimed by MSI themselves, 15 hours is still a pretty big claim. If they tell us 15 hours and it runs for 10, we’d be happy all the same.

The rest of the standard spec is still kept from the initial announcement, with a system that includes the 1.66GHz Atom processor, 1GB of memory, and a minimum 160GB hard drive preloaded with Windows 7 Starter. Features include a chiclet-type keyboard, Wi-fi b/g/draft-n connectivity, and a built in 1.3MP webcam.

It’s available at Newegg for $380, but still listed for preorders on Amazon for the same price.

HP has just put out a new video that shows they’ll be working with Adobe for Flash support on their upcoming Slate device. The move is seen as a one-up move over Apple’s iPad (and Apple’s insistence on skipping Flash support), allowing HP’s portable to show Flash-based websites such as Hulu, along with a rather large percent of the top websites that use Flash animation and Flash-based video streaming. So take that, Apple. Or not. Since, you know, Jobs doesn’t care much for Adobe.

Still no word on when HP’s Slate will come out, although it does look pretty cool from where we’re sitting. The interface isn’t as polished as Apple’s, but it’s a Windows 7-kind of cool. Which is pretty much our way of saying “hey, at least it’s a full-featured porta-PC.”

Here’s a hybrid device that comes with a useful mix of functions: Aiptek’s PocketCinema Z20 combines a pico projector with a 5MP digital camera that can record 720p HD videos. That’s a handy thing to have on a vacation or a company trip that mixes business with a bit of downtime; a pocket-sized device that’ll shoot videos from the hip and then show them on the wall for everyone to watch right after.

The Z20 comes with its own 2GB internal memory, plus a microSD card slot that allows for expansion. It’s listed to be able to come up with a 65-inch projection, with the ability to act as a separate projector that you can plug other sources—like set-top boxes, consoles, and notebooks for presentations—into. For showing HD videos onto other displays, the Z20 also comes with A/V connections and an HDMI adapter for porting photos and videos to an HDTV.

It’s set to be released next month in Europe for the equivalent of around $475.

Although solar-charging phones is seen as a direction everyone could move on to down the road, this makes a little bit more sense—if only for the people who don’t have the time to leave their phones under the sun. Nokia has filed a patent for a “piezoelectric Kinetic Energy Harvester,” or, in more simple terms, a cell phone battery that charges itself with electricity gained from movement—basically like a self-powered kinetic watch with the spinning weights inside.

A pretty cool idea overall if they can pull it off with results that actually makes sense in terms of just how much charge you can get from moving your phone around. Mobile phones are always moving along with the person after all—in bags, cars and most likely in pants pockets, where they can swing along with your leg while walking. Unless you have a Nexus One, which is evidently a phone that should never be placed in your pocket.

Source: Unwired View

There are iPad clones and there are iPad clones that are designed to look like the real thing. This latest iPad “inspired” device, the 10.2-inch Ezy Tablet PC looks pretty close up front, but the sides give it away. Other things that give it away? It’s powered by an Intel Atom platform and runs on a Windows 7 OS. But that’s not such a bad thing, mind you.

The rest of the spec is pretty much the same as a standard netbook, with a system built around Intel’s older 1.6GHz Atom N270, Intel 950 chipset and 2GBs of memory. The interface is standard Windows, helped along with the touchscreen that supports multi-touch input. Storage comes by way of a 250GB SATA hard drive, plus connectivity options that include Wi-fi and mobile broadband. The rather thick frame (at the very least, it’s relatively thicker than an iPad) also includes built-in audio, a multi-memory card slot, a 1.3MP webcam, USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet port, and a battery that’s listed to run for up to 3.5 hours on a charge.

One unit is listed to cost $679 through this link.

The touch keyboard might prove to be a stretch though; you have to wonder if the world is ready for typing solely on a touch-based keyboard—the technology is awesome and that’s something we’d like to see, but we think the mechanical feel of a nice, crisp keyboard is something we’re not ready to drop.

According to the report, the border-less glass-lid design should help reduce material costs, but we somehow don’t see this as something they’ll be selling at a bargain.