Samsung is planning to launch the new Galaxy-line tablet in June, according to a person familiar with the matter, adding to the seven-inch and 10.1-inch versions on the market.

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“We had planned to launch this next generation of the award-winning Samsung Galaxy line-up on Saturday, April 27,” Sprint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, due to unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung, we will be slightly delayed with our full product launch.”

The No. 3 U.S. carrier still expects to make it available online and via phone sales Saturday, with retail-store launches once supply increases.

Update: T-Mobile said it, too, is pushing things back.

“We know customers are really looking forward to getting their new Samsung Galaxy S 4 soon,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “However, due to an unexpected delay with inventory deliveries, the Galaxy S 4 will not be available on www.T-Mobile.com as planned today. Instead, online availability is expected to begin on Monday, April 29. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working with Samsung to deliver the device to T-Mobile customers as soon as possible.”

As for stores, T-Mobile said the Galaxy S 4 is now expected in selected T-Mobile stores and other retailers on May 8, with nationwide retail availability starting May 15.

AT&T, by contrast, says its planned Saturday launch is on schedule. “We are on track with our planned April 27th in-store launch of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and are excited to hear what our customers think of this highly anticipated smartphone,” a representative told AllThingsD.

Verizon, meanwhile, has said it will start taking preorders on Thursday but won’t have the Galaxy S 4 available until May 30.

Samsung on Thursday introduced the Galaxy Mega — an even bigger “phablet” than its already substantial Galaxy Note.

The Mega will come in both 5.8-inch and 6.3-inch sizes, offering two new finger-stretching options. It borrows several features from the just-introduced Galaxy S4, including the ability to capture photos with audio and to do real-time translation.

“We are aware of a great potential in the bigger screen for extensive viewing multimedia, Web browsing, and more,” Samsung Electronics CEO JK Shin said in a statement.

The Mega will be available globally, starting with Russia and Europe in May. No specific mention of U.S. availability was made in the announcement.

With the launch of the Mega, Samsung really does have a device at every screen size, given that it now has the Galaxy Tab 2 at seven inches and the Galaxy Note 8.0.

1.) Samsung Galaxy S4: Bigger Display and Bolder Software — But Is It Better Enough?

2.) How Apple Gets All the Good Apps

3.) Telling Employees He Hasn’t “Walked the Talk,” Cisco’s John Chambers Leans In on Women in the Workplace Issue

4.) LinkedIn to Buy Pulse Newsreader for More Than $50M (and here’s what they could do with Pulse)

5.) How One Boring Company Pulled Off the Perfect SXSW Troll

6.) Crowdfunding for a Cause: Nonprofits Can Now Hold Fundraisers on Crowdtilt

7.) IBM Makes a Big Bet on OpenStack in the Cloud

8.) Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Gets a Million-Dollar Bonus After Six Months on the Job

9.) Nokia: A Microsoft Surface Phone Could Screw Us

10.) Outbox: Yahoo Mail Head Sharma Leaves Company (Update: And he has now joined Disney’s online parks division)

For more of the week in review, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

It was the HTC One.

The Taiwanese phonemaker dispatched a street team to pass out snacks and hot cocoa while demoing the HTC phone as folks gathered for Samsung’s big event.

“For us it’s a good opportunity to let people compare real-time,” HTC President Jason Mackenzie said in an interview. “We have the best smartphone in the world right now, and we want to seize the opportunity to get it into as many hands as possible.”

To that end, HTC also passed out coupons offering $100 to those who trade in their phone for the new One.

HTC wasn’t alone in seizing Samsung’s big stage to try and grab some attention. LG had a billboard above Samsung’s Times Square signage, while Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller did a round of interviews ahead of Thursday’s launch.

But taking on Samsung so directly represents a new approach for HTC. For years, the company sold its phones under the tagline “quietly brilliant,” and tended to have a marketing approach to match.

After losing significant ground, though, the company has decided it needs to speak up if it doesn’t want to see its fortunes erode further.

Plus, the HTC One and Galaxy S4 are really targeted at the same buyer, and both are due to hit the market around the same time.

“We’ve got to compete,” Mackenzie told AllThingsD. “These two products will spend their product life in market together.”

All four U.S. carriers will carry the Galaxy S4. At its February launch, HTC announced the One would be carried by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. As first reported by AllThingsD, Verizon is also prepping to carry the One, though it is likely to arrive a month or two later than at the other U.S. carriers.

Pricing has not been announced for either product, though Mackenzie expects both to carry a similar price tag.

“I’m sure both products will come out under $200,” Mackenzie said. “That would be my expectation.”

After watching the Galaxy S4′s glitzy launch, though, Mackenzie quipped, “Maybe it wil cost more because they have to pay for the tap dancers.”

But, more seriously, Mackenzie knows that HTC has to compete not only with the new features Samsung introduces but with all the money they have to spend on billboards, TV ads and splashy launches.

“We expect Samsung to spend a ton of money on marketing,” he said. For its part, HTC can’t afford to match Samsung, but it also can’t hide or shy away. Whereas in the past HTC has spent heavily in spurts, Mackenzie said to expect a sustained push around the HTC One, one that will extend over the life of the product.

“As a consumer you will see us,” he said. “You will know there are things that make the HTC One great.”

Probably not. But Samsung hopes its newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, will do the trick (you know, at least until the next Next Big Thing).

The Galaxy S4 was officially unveiled tonight in New York City at the famed Radio City Music Hall, with a Broadway-like display of pantomimed smartphone use-cases. As widely expected, the new smartphone has some notable improvements on the hardware side, including a bigger display and a thinner body.

But as my AllThingsD colleague Ina Fried intuited earlier, a lot of the innovation is coming on the software side.

The global launch for the LTE-equipped smartphone — including the U.S. market — is pegged for the second quarter of this year. As it did last year with the SIII, Samsung has managed to convince a broad swath of carriers, in the U.S. and around the world, to carry the phone.

In the States it will be available through AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, as well as through Cricket and US Cellular. While Samsung declined to put a price tag on the S4, it should be right in line with other Samsung premium smartphones. And in the U.S. that tends to be around $200 or $300 with a new two-year contract.

Here’s what you need to know: The Galaxy S4 has a 5-inch, full HD Super AMOLED display with the most minimal of bezels on the left and right side of the screen. The phone weighs 4.5 ounces, just a little bit lighter than the Galaxy SIII, and is 7.9mm thick — a few hairs thinner than the SIII’s 8.6mm.

It’s running Jelly Bean 4.2.2 (which includes Google Now, the search giant’s version of Siri).

Its processor is Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 Pro, 1.9 Ghz processor. In other words, it’s speedy. The phone is built with 2 gigabytes of RAM and will come with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage, along with a microSD card slot for additional storage capacity.

And the Galaxy S4 has a 2600mAh battery, compared with the Galaxy SIII’s 2100mAh and the iPhone 5’s 1440mAh battery — though, with a bigger screen and new features, real-world battery life remains to be seen.

It also has a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera. But, since we all know megapixels don’t tell the full story — especially on smartphones — consider the other features of the camera: There’s a dual-view mode, so you can see yourself in a small frame within the frame while you’re shooting, and eraser mode, which lets you erase offensive “photo-bombers” from a scene. As with previous Samsung smartphones, filters can be slapped on while shooting.

While the S4 doesn’t include a bendable display, something we know is cooking in Samsung’s labs, it does include two new features that build on top of Samsung’s already-existing Smart Stay feature: Smart Scroll and Smart Pause. Yes, this is the eye-tracking stuff that people were getting all sorts of breathless about.

Smart Stay keeps the screen alive and bright if the phone sensed you were reading or watching something. Now, Smart Pause will pause a video if it senses you’re no longer watching it, and Smart Scroll will scroll your Web page up or down based on your actions — but this has more to do with how you tip the phone than with the movement of your eyes.

The S4 also picks up a trick from the Galaxy Note II “phablet.” When you hover your finger over your email inbox on the Galaxy S4, it will show a few lines of content from that note. (The Note requires the use of a stylus, rather than a finger, to pull off that trick.) There’s also more gesture recognition with this device — for example, waving your hand over the display to swipe through photos, or music tracks.

Last but not least, Samsung is taking a bigger step into the wearable health and fitness market with an upcoming line of fitness bands, scales and heart monitoring devices that will be compatible with the S-Health app on the smsartphone.

Some of these piled-on upgrades in the Galaxy S4 feel incremental, or are simply borrowed from other Samsung smartphones (see my full review here of the Samsung Galaxy Note II, and Walt’s review of the Samsung Galaxy SIII). But the Korean electronics giant’s baby steps and increasingly desirable flagship phones are beginning to set it apart in the high-end smartphone market.

Apple still wins out in terms of smartphone subscribers in the U.S., with reports saying that iPhone is still growing considerably faster than Android here.

But Samsung, with its offerings of both high-end and low-end phones, outsells Apple in the global handset market. Gartner Research showed Samsung soaring from 18.7 percent of the global market to 30.3 percent last year, topping both Apple and Nokia. And Android phones, according to IDC, represented about 70 percent of global handset shipments last year — with Android, of course, appearing on a variety of devices from many different handset manufacturers.

Apple yesterday went on the offensive (with a rare defensive) yesterday, dismissing market analyses and citing the iPhone experience, its thinness and brilliant display as key factors that still set it apart from the pack.

Apple is also rumored to be considering a cheaper iPhone, as well as a wearable, smartphone-compatible “iWatch” product, which could help it keeps its lead in both profits and image.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

It’s a scene familiar in the tech world.

The press is lined up hours before the event starts. Competitors are trying to get in on the act.

But it’s usually Apple, not Samsung, that gets this kind of attention.

That the Galaxy S IV launch is commanding this sort of spotlight is a testament to just how much Samsung has grown its smartphone standing in just the couple of years since the first crop of Galaxy S devices. While the iPhone is still the product most talked about in the industry, the Galaxy S has become not only the best-selling Android model and the most common reference point for those talking about the operating system.

A lot is known about the phone and its features, thanks to the usual array of leaks. But there’s still a big unveil to be done as well as time to ruminate on what Samsung is showing.

Lauren Goode is on the scene at Radio City Music Hall and Ina Fried is back in San Francisco to take in the Webcast and offer additional commentary. The doors don’t open for a while yet but check back for intermittent updates and then live coverage once things do really get going.

3:14 pm: As mentioned, Samsung’s rivals have been busy trying to make sure their message gets heard. LG took out this Times Square billboard playing off Samsung’s use of the number 4.

Meanwhile, Apple gave interviews and HTC is outside Radio City Music Hall showing their new HTC One flagship device to those arriving early for Samsung’s event.

3:18 pm: As we noted in our story this morning, all eyes will be on the hardware, but what’s most important is how relevant, useful and well-executed are the new Galaxy’s software features.

3:20 pm: Lauren Goode has checked in with her frozen fingers barely able to type. It looks like the line is split at least three ways — consumers, broadcast media and other media — with all lines wrapping around the block. There’s a fair bit of chaos to go along with the frostbite.

It’s about 69 degrees here at my keyboard in San Francisco. Of course, it’s only fair. When Lauren and I teamed up at CES a few years back for our infamous Footballmer blog, she got the BCS championship game in 3-D and I got Steve Ballmer.

3:36 pm: A few more frozen fingers, but not much new to report. Stay tuned.

3:44 pm: Meanwhile, it looks like I have company in choosing to watch the event from afar.

More than 120,000 people are tuned into the YouTube Webcast and there’s nothing happening yet.

3:46 pm: “Ladies and gentleman, the show will begin in 15 minutes,” or so says the voice on the Webcast.

3:47 pm: Gotta love this tweet from fauxTimCook.

3:54 pm: For those who want to capture every minute of things, the YouTube Webcast is here, but we’ll make sure you get all the details, some analysis and have some fun along the way.

3:55 pm: Five minute warning. Which reminds me, time to grab a snack. I ate all the ice cream sandwiches and my key lime pie hasn’t arrived. Guess I’ll have some jelly beans.

4:05 pm: And now we wait. We’re now told the show will begin in a few minutes.

7:11 pm: Hi Ina! Lauren here. Looks like Samsung couldn’t afford good Wi-Fi … until now!

4:11 pm: 5, 4, 3, 2 …

4:11 pm: Things kick off with a video of their bow-tie clad kid carrying the box to the “unpacked” event.

First Rockette joke of the night. Do a shot, everyone.

Jeremy is the kid’s name. He’s on stage with Will Chase.

Chase offers the kid a candy bar to see what’s in the box. No dice.

(There are 365,000 people watching the YouTube stream, btw.)

4:14 pm: Cue Samsung’s JK Shin.

“In the past several weeks we have heard an amazing combination of rumor and speculation about what I am going to unveil tonight,” Shin said, before launching into a talk on Samsung’s commitment to innovation.

He’s teasing some features, recording sound with photos, seeing yourself in a shot, the eye-tracking smart scroll and smart pause features.

Some sort of translator feature as well as a new “group play” feature.

“We imagine that great things can come from this.”

7:16 pm: Also: Samsung S Health, for activity tracking, and S Knox, for security.

Devices could help with health, divide between work and home (featuring its newly-branded Knox business features), etc.

4:19 pm: Galaxy S4 being shown now. Looks a lot like the Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note.

And yes, it’s S4, not S IV. (In many ways, that was the biggest unanswered question.)

4:21 pm: 327 operators in more than 150 countries will carry the S4, which will come in 3G and 4GLTE varieties starting in April.

It’s 7.9mm thick, thinner than SIII and weighs less too, even with its larger 5-inch screen.

“There’s less to hold and more to see,” according to the onstage sales pitch.

It will come in a polycarbonate case in “Black Mist” and “White Frost.”

4:25 pm: A bunch of LTE specs that were over even my head, but can support really fast uploads and downloads. I think.

There’s also Bluetooth 4.0, infrared LED for remote control features and a bunch of flavors of Wi-Fi. Main camera is 13MP with a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

7:26 pm: Lauren here. That infrared remote control feature should also work with non-Samsung smart TVs, too.

16GB of storage built-in with options for 32GB or 64GB as well as MicroSD slot for even more storage.

A bunch of sensors, too, including gesture-sensing and temperature and humidity gauges.

Bigger 2,600 mAH removable battery should help power all that.

7:27 pm: Oh my, Ina. Pop-up elementary school on stage. Little girl in a tutu chides father for having crappy smartphone camera.

4:28 pm: Broadway performers are a new twist on showing a product in “real-world scenarios.”

Samsung showing off cool dual-camera mode. User can record him/herself in frame while shooting video/taking pictures.

That’s cool for families that have one main photographer who never seems to be in any photos. (I have a little firsthand experience here.)

7:30 pm: Sound and shot feature lets you add up to nine seconds of audio with a photo.

Tap-dancing children!

4:33 pm: Eraser feature lets you take out people you don’t want from your picture.

No more cutting out the bystander or ex with scissors.

4:34 pm: Now showing S Translate feature for when two people don’t share a language. This tech, being shown in different ways by different companies, is truly amazing.

S Translate understands nine languages (10 if you count British English different from Yankee speak).

No pig latin yet. A reader app can translate menus, magazines, etc.

4:37 pm: An adapt display changes settings based on what you are doing, be it reading text or looking at a video of a five-legged cat.

Next up: A story album feature designed to automatically sort photos into folders and then make better use of them. It even knows when you are away from home and sets up an album.

Partnership with Blurb lets you send a printed photo album for $10-$30.

And, if you happen to have a Home Sync device, you can see the photos as they are being taken. Think Apple TV (only you’ve never heard of it).

It was announced at Mobile World Congress, has 1TB of storage.

It has NFC for tap and connect, but can connect to other kinds of devices too.

7:40 pm: And after this, Samsung execs will be appearing at the Stardust Diner to show off their newly-acquired Broadway skills!

They are now doing “A day in the life of an actor”

4:43 pm: A Smart Switch program is designed to allow one to move from a rival smartphone to a new Galaxy.

Meanwhile, S Voice Drive does what you think it would in terms of directions, but also gets other information like weather and email via voice navigation.

It seems like the Galaxy S4 can act like a sort of personal assistant. (Hmm…)

Like the touchscreen on Nokia’s Lumia 920, the S4 works with gloves.

4:46 pm: Things are still cooking here, but if you can multitask, here’s Lauren’s writeup on the Galaxy.

Onstage, Samsung is talking about Knox, the business software it introduced at last month’s Mobile World Congress. A key feature of Knox is the container approach that separates work and personal information.

The Galaxy S4 is the first device to feature Knox.

7:48 pm: Now we’re in Miami, Ina. I’ll take it. I could use some sun.

Yes Lauren, but when this schtick is over you will still be in frigid NY and I’ll still be in San Francisco.

7:49 pm: Still waiting for the powerful-businesswoman use-case for this phone, Ina. #LeanIn, Samsung.

The Miami scene is to show off the “Group Play” feature.

Don’t know about that, but I should note there are now 412,000 people tuned into this.

It’s a good thing it is a tech product launch, because I think if it were a Broadway show it would only run for one night.

4:53 pm: An “Air Gesture” feature lets you scroll though photos or Web pages without touching the phone itself. A wave of the hand can also answer a phone.

When you look away from the phone, the “smart pause” feature puts a video on hold. (LG pre-announced a similar feature for its Optimus G earlier this week.)

4:54 pm: Some attachments can make the phone a useful health monitoring tool to measure weight, heart rate and other information.

7:55 pm: It’s official, Ina, according to this skit: Females are vapid consumers that think S Health can replace marrying a doctor.

4:56 pm: As the event is wrapping up, we just got a note from Samsung’s mSpot music unit noting it is expanding its Silicon Valley presence with new digs in Palo Alto and plans to hire more workers.

mSpot became part of Samsung in May 2012.

4:58 pm: Things are winding down onstage. Here’s the advantage for Lauren and the folks that braved the cold — they get some hands-on time with the new phone.

All us remote folks can do is watch the YouTube numbers drop (383,000 and falling).

I did catch some handy specs on screen.

And things are clearing out quick.

When HTC announced the phone last month, it said the One would be sold at AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. A mention of Verizon was noticeably absent.

However, Verizon will also carry the high-end Android device, according to a source familiar with the situation. Its launch at Verizon, though, will trail the other U.S. carriers by a month or two as it winds its way through the testing process.

HTC and Verizon representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The eventual launch at Verizon means that all four major carriers will be carrying the One, allowing the product to fulfill a key objective for the struggling phone maker.

When HTC announced the first One models in 2012, the goal was to create a single flagship line that would help define HTC’s image in the minds of consumers. The first One series, though, was actually three distinct phones — the One X, One V and One S.

What’s more, Sprint and Verizon opted to carry their own high-end HTC models rather than any of the three Ones.

This year, though, HTC has managed to get all four carriers to support the One. That should help the company, which is seeking to boost its visibility and better compete against high-end rivals, particularly Apple and Samsung.

HTC is not alone in having to struggle to get mobile operators on board with carrying the same flagship models. Samsung made a host of Galaxy models before convincing carriers to go with essentially the same Galaxy S3 last year.

Having the same model at all the carriers could help HTC get more bang for its marketing bucks, as it can focus the bulk of its efforts on a single product.

And it will need every bit of that budget to compete against Samsung’s Galaxy S4, which is slated to be unveiled Thursday at a glitzy launch in Manhattan.

The once high-flying Taiwanese phone maker has been struggling mightily in recent months. The company has seen its market share slip even as it continues to produce well-regarded phones.

The company has said it plans to speak with a louder voice this year as it tries to regain lost ground.

Amid pressure from Samsung and others, HTC reported that its monthly sales were 11.37 billion Taiwan dollars ($383.7 million). That was also down 27 percent from January’s sales.

The company is banking on its latest flagship phone, the HTC One, to help stanch the hemorrhaging.

HTC showed off the phone last month, grabbing some headlines ahead of Mobile World Congress, and before Samsung introduces its Galaxy S 4.

Samsung is set to show its new Galaxy at a New York event on March 14.

“There’s one big company that’s being hugely successful,” Rubin said in a roundtable with reporters at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. “That’s mostly about execution. It’s not mostly around Android.”

Rubin says that other Android makers are still making profits, if not large ones. And if they want to make more money, they will have to find their own path to take on Samsung.

“People have to figure out how to run their own businesses,” he said. “Should I be unfair to Samsung? I can’t do that. I have to be fair to everyone.”

Rubin also noted the huge investment Samsung has made in building its brand from upstart to global household name in recent years.

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A Samsung representative confirmed the date and location for the event, but declined to offer further details.

The confirmation comes just as the world’s biggest cellphone show — Mobile World Congress — kicks off in Barcelona. Samsung used the show to launch an eight-inch version of its Galaxy Note tablet, but, like HTC, opted not to make its big news at the show.

The Galaxy S has emerged as the biggest single rival to Apple’s iPhone, and has propelled Samsung to become the most high-profile — and profitable — of the Android device makers.

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But now the guy who pushed that campaign has gone over to Google. And Samsung’s new spot doesn’t even bother to tease the competition. Here’s the company’s Apple-less Super Bowl spot (remember, you no longer have to wait to see the game if you want to watch the ads):

Peter Kafka Patented Snap Judgement Review: Bob Odenkirk, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are all awesome. But they’re more awesome when they’re not doing this stuff for a sponsor.

I have owned every iphone released (and every ipad and galaxy and kindle). It is far better to actually use a product day in and day out so before CES I started using it and will use it for a month or so. Just prior I was using my 920. In Office I spent a long time using SmartSuite or Google Docs for the same reasons.

– Steven Sinofsky, commenting on a post by Bijan Sabet, entitled “Why Don’t Microsoft Alumni Use Their Own Products?”

Samsung said it filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission after Ericsson, a Swedish maker of mobile-network infrastructure, earlier this month went to the commission to seek a ban on the import to the U.S. of some of Samsung’s wireless products, including devices in its popular Galaxy range of tablets and smartphones.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A Dutch court on Wednesday found that some Samsung Galaxy devices that run Android 2.2.1 and higher infringe an Apple patent describing a means of navigating images in a photo gallery. And when Samsung refused to sign a declaration of abstinence pledging no further infringement of the patent, the presiding judge issued a ban on infringing devices. Samsung must also, within eight weeks, tell Apple how much net profit it made from sales of those devices since June 27, 2011; that number is to be used in determining damages. If it fails to do so, it must pay Apple $129,000 until it does.

So, another legal blow for Samsung, though not a particularly devastating one. The company has already designed around the Apple patent at issue here, so most of its newer devices aren’t in violation of it. If any Galaxy products end up being pulled off the market, they’ll likely be older ones.

“Samsung is disappointed with the court’s ruling. Apple has been trying to limit consumer choice and discourage innovation through their excessive and flawed legal arguments,” the company said in a statement. “We remain confident that our products are unique, and we will continue to take all available measures to protect consumer choice in the Netherlands.”

Apple declined comment.

And on it goes …

With its new Android-based Galaxy Camera, Samsung is gambling that Web-crazed consumers will want to take on these commitments for the chance to share photos whenever they want.

The idea of marrying a Google Android mobile operating system with a digital camera is not entirely new. Nikon has done it, Polaroid plans to do it, and now Samsung has introduced this camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera has some distinct advantages over its main competitor, the $300 Nikon Coolpix S800c. It has better hardware and is running the newest Android OS, Jelly Bean. And the Nikon is Wi-Fi-only. While testing it (here’s my review of that camera), I wasn’t able to share many photos on the spot. Most times, I’d wait until I was back home or at a hotel before I would share the photos via Gmail, or to Instagram or Facebook.



While testing the Galaxy, I’ve been able to share my photos at any time — even when I didn’t have access to Wi-Fi. And the camera shares photos quickly when it connects to AT&T’s 4G network (which is HSPA+, not LTE).   



But there are three key things to consider with this camera. For one, it’s relatively big. Another detractor is price: It sells for $499.99, although AT&T is currently offering the camera for $399.99 if you also buy any Samsung Galaxy smartphone — yes, a second device — with a two-year contract.



If you want the constant connectivity, you’ll have to sign up for an AT&T data plan, or add another line to your existing AT&T plan. You can pay an additional $10 a month on top of your AT&T mobile plan to share between one gigabyte and 20GB of data, or you can opt in to a separate “data connect” plan that can range from $15 to $50 to share between 250 megabytes and 5GB of data.

And in case you’re wondering: The camera does not act as a phone.

There’s also a plan activation fee of $35.

 So, unless you’re already an AT&T customer on a mobile share plan, you can expect to pay at least a $15 monthly fee to use this camera, plus a fee just to get it connected. While consumers are pretty accustomed to these costs when it comes to smartphones, they’re new to cameras. 


Some consumers might even wonder why they’d need such a high-priced Android camera when some newer smartphones, like the iPhone 5, the HTC Evo 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, have pretty good eight-megapixel cameras.



With all that said, if you’re still interested in buying the Galaxy Camera — it’s an impressive camera, one that does take better photos than a lot of smartphone cameras.



It measures 5.07 x 2.79 x .75 of an inch, and weighs 11 ounces. Its all-white body has a curve on the right side that’s covered with etched plastic for a better grip, and it feels solid.



It’s also chunky, due in part to the large lens pocket on the front of the camera. It felt heavy in my purse and in my coat pocket. It didn’t fit in some smaller clutch purses, and it definitely wasn’t fitting in the pocket of my jeans. Samsung explains it size by saying that the camera basically crams two high-end gadgets into one. 



The Galaxy Camera has a powerful, quad-core processor, a large 16-megapixel image sensor and a 23-millimeter wide-angle lens. It has an attractive, 4.8-inch HD touchscreen display. On the top, there’s a dial for controlling the 21x zoom — which also doubles as a volume control button. Otherwise, there are no dials on the camera, keeping it refreshingly simple. 




Its home screen looks just like the home screen of an Android smartphone — including icons for apps like email, Google Maps, a Web browser and the Google Play store. I was able to easily download apps for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When you tap the camera icon, you can opt to shoot pictures in Auto mode, Smart mode or Expert mode, the latter of which offers some manual settings (like ISO, shutter speed or aperture priority). Auto mode includes a variety of fun photo filters. There’s also a one-tap video-recording button for capturing HD video.

In most situations, excluding some low-light settings or scenes with a lot of movement, the camera took amazingly crisp and vibrant photos. 

And the option to share those photos right away was admittedly pretty convenient.

When I was out in Boston one night, I was able to take a good picture in the dark of the exterior of Fenway Park, and quickly post it online for my boss (who happens to be a rabid Red Sox fan). Over Thanksgiving dinner, I took pictures of a couple and their dog for a potential Christmas-card cover, and sent them the ones they liked on the spot. I shared photos via Instagram.

A photo taken with the Samsung Galaxy Camera



I also used the camera to check email, browse Twitter and navigate an unfamiliar area using Google Maps. 

It was almost enough to make me ditch my smartphone some nights — except, of course, I couldn’t receive or send text messages or make phone calls with the camera. So I still carried around both devices, and mainly pulled the camera out when I wanted to capture a really good-quality photo. 


In my experience, battery life on the Galaxy Camera wasn’t great. I had to charge it once every couple days, and I was using it intermittently. Samsung doesn’t have an official claim for battery life. The battery life of standard point-and-shoots is usually measured by how many shots you can take per charge. When you add a full mobile OS to the camera and allow for apps and Web browsing, it gets a bit tricky.



Fortunately, as with Android smartphones, you can see which apps are running in the background, or put the camera into either “Airplane” or “smart network” mode to conserve power. 


The Samsung Galaxy Camera is the best Android-based camera that’s currently available, but consumers should weigh the cost commitment that comes with being always connected.

With all the hyped hullabaloo around just how mobile-icious we are this holiday season — yes, it’s up, but it is also a retailer-cooked trend that reporters grab onto amid the news drought of the Thanksgiving weekend — one of the many statistics spewed out by a variety of sources was rather interesting.

According to IBM, in a report titled “The iPad Factor”:

“The [Apple] iPad generated more traffic than any other tablet or smartphone, reaching nearly 10 percent of online shopping. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and [Google] Android 5.5 percent. The iPad dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes & Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent.”

And, over at eBay and its PayPal unit — which spewed out all kinds of data on mobile transactions that showed volume was between two and three times greater, mostly on Apple devices — the company noted that one of its bestselling items on Black Friday was the iPad 2, selling 250 per hour from 12 am to 8 am PT.

That tracks on an earlier survey by Nielsen with 48 percent of U.S. children 6 to 12 years old asking for the iPad, followed by iPod touch (36 percent), iPad mini (36 percent) and iPhone (33 percent).

Presumably, which will be used to order more.

Here’s a lovely IBM chart explaining it all:

IBM Holiday Benchmark Infographic BF2012

The Korean electronics giant said earlier today that it has sold more than three million Galaxy Note II “phablets” since the device first went on sale overseas 37 days ago.

The Galaxy Note II is the company’s second-generation sandwich-sized smartphone, measuring six inches by three inches, with a 5.5-inch display.

It was first released in South Korea in September, and came to the U.S. market and other countries in October. It’s running on a new Google Android operating system, Jelly Bean 4.1 and, as I noted in my recent review, despite it’s sometimes-awkward size, it’s a well-made phone.

The first Galaxy Note, launched in the U.S. in February 2012, was greeted with some raised eyebrows due to its size (AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg called it “positively gargantuan”). Despite that, 10 million of those devices have sold worldwide.

Samsung’s Note II sales numbers still fall short of Apple’s first-weekend iPhone 5 sales numbers, which topped five million.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh on Thursday denied Apple’s request to seal many of the documents the company used to make its damages case, ordering it to release key financial information regarding “product-specific unit sales, revenue, profit, profit margin, and cost data.” Koh argues that Apple cannot both use its financial data to seek multibillion dollar damages and product injunctions, and keep that data secret.

“Apple’s motion seeks to permanently enjoin the sale of 26 Samsung products that have already been on the market for varying lengths of time, and seeks an enhancement of $535 million on top of the $1.05 billion in damages awarded by the jury,” Koh said in her ruling. “Such remedies would have a profound effect on the smartphone industry, consumers, and the public. As the extensive media coverage indicates, this is a truly extraordinary case of exceptional interest to the public. Apple’s reasons would have to be very compelling indeed to overcome the unsually robust public interest in access.”

And, in Koh’s opinion, they’re simply not. Apple’s main argument for protecting this data is that they are trade secrets that would provide its rivals with a competitive advantage. But evidently that’s not reason enough. And while Koh agreed to a temporary stay, pending federal court appeal, Apple may soon find itself forced to reveal important sales data that it has long kept private. A blow to the company, but great news for investors and analysts that have long guessed at what it might be.

The U.K. Court of Appeals Thursday decided not to overturn a lower court ruling that will force Apple to publicly recant allegations that Samsung copied the design of the iPad for its own Galaxy tablet. First issued in July, the mandate requires Apple to post to its Web site, and in a number of British newspapers and magazines, a notice explaining that Samsung has not infringed its intellectual property with the Galaxy. Specifically, Apple must link to the original order from the front page of all its EU Web sites for a month, and publish notices in the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, Mobile Magazine and T3 magazine, “in a font size no smaller than Arial 14 on a page earlier than Page 6.”

Arial, not Helvetica? Cruel punishment, indeed. (Could have been worse; could have been Comic Sans.)

The court’s rationale for denying Apple’s appeal? To do otherwise would stifle competition.

“If the registered design has a scope as wide as Apple contends, it would foreclose much of the market for tablet computers,” the court wrote in its decision. “Alterations in thickness, curvature of the sides, embellishment and so on would not escape its grasp. Legitimate competition by different designs would be stifled.”

The point-and-shoot camera market has been hit hard. Smartphones increasingly replace traditional cameras as consumers prefer the ability to immediately tweak and share their photos over such things as image quality, optical zoom and other advantages of a camera-only option.

Now, though, Samsung, Nikon and others are offering an option that aims to deliver the best of both worlds by combining the optics of a point-and-shoot camera with the Android interface and, in some cases, even the cellular connectivity found on a smartphone.

The downside of cellular capability, of course, is that customers will need to pay for all that data use, which, with large pictures, can easily add up.

The Galaxy Camera, first announced back in August, packs the Jelly Bean version of Android along with many of the social sharing features found on the Galaxy S III phone, along with a 21X optical zoom and 16-megapixel sensor.

“Wirelessly enabling Samsung’s Galaxy Camera will create a significant shift in how consumers share and communicate with photos and videos,” AT&T senior vice president Chris Penrose said in a statement. “By posting instantly to social networking sites or sending directly to another device, the person behind the lens is essentially offering family and friends the opportunity to share in the moments as they are actually experiencing them. We’re excited that the AT&T wireless network will help enable these opportunities.”

Whether consumers are willing to pay for and carry a second device, though, remains to be seen. AT&T said the Galaxy Camera will be available “in the coming weeks” but didn’t announce pricing for the device or related service plans, though it would seem a natural addition to one of the new plans that lets customers share a bucket of data across multiple devices.

That’s if you trust SquareTrade, the electronics warranty company that likes to perform entertaining — but still, er, hard-hitting — crash tests with popular gadgets.

In its latest video, SquareTrade puts Apple’s new iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone to the test, dropping each phone on paved roads, dunking them in a swimming pool and banging TV remotes against the phones.

In June, the company pitted Apple’s iPhone 4S against the Galaxy S III, which you can view here, if your Friday is going really slowly.

But first, check out the new video below:

The Korean electronics giant has sent out an invite for an Oct. 24 event in New York. Though it is short on details, the invite does have an image of a digital pen, suggesting the product could be another in the Galaxy Note lineup.

Samsung already has its five-inch Galaxy Note and its 10-inch Galaxy Note tablet, along with non-pen devices in seemingly every screen size from three inches to 10 inches.

The Galaxy Note II, the sequel to last year’s “phablet,” was introduced in August and is slated to hit all the major US carriers.