Galaxy

Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly profit Friday due to leading sales of high-end phones and a gain from selling its hard-disk drive business.

The South Korean company  posted 5.2 trillion won, or $4.5 billion USD, in quarterly operating profit. The figure pummeled Reuters’ consensus forecast of 4.7 trillion won, where the news wire said actual profit “may rise or fall by 200 billion won from the preliminary figure when the firm provides detailed earnings later this month.”

Reuters further elaborated after the profits were posted that the result would “top Samsung’s previous record profit of 5.0 trillion won earned in the second quarter of 2010 and is up 22 percent from the preceding quarter.”

Meanwhile, Reuters contended, Samsung’s one-off gains predicted for the fourth quarter include the sale of its hard-disk drive business to Seagate Technology that amassed around 500 billion won, and the lowered mobile provisions involving royalty payments…

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Today is the day that UK customers can finally get their hands on the Galaxy Nexus, with Google updating the device’s page to include links to retailers and carriers including Phones4U, Three, Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone, and O2.

Earlier Samsung sent out a tweet of Alex Ioannou, the first customer to purchase the device this morning. However, it looks like Ioannou  might not have had the best of luck, as Engadget reports the man got home only to find a pre-release developer build of Android with a bunch of developer tools including “Report a WTF condition”. Needlessly to say, Ioannou has since replaced the device, which somehow must have slipped through the cracks without getting the final ICS treatment.

Google has also posted a bunch of videos to their Nexus YouTube account showing off some of the new ICS features of the Galaxy Nexus including multitasking, face unlock, camera and panorama, and Android Beam. One video, entitled “Getting Started (US)”, shows the US version of the device with “Verizon 4G” branding and all. You can check out a selection of the videos below.

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Last we heard Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus was set to ship in the US on November 13th. Ahead of schedule, Amazon is now shipping the the 7-inch, Android Honeycomb-powered device for $399. If you’re unfamiliar, the Tab Plus ships with a 1024×600 Super LCD display, 1GB of RAM, microSD slot, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 3-megapixel main cam, and 2-megapixel front cam. You can grab it now in 16 and 32 GB variants. It also packs in the Peel Smart Remote application and built-in IR sensor for controlling your A/V setup. Head over to Amazon to get it now.

Amazon also recently started shipping their Android-based Galaxy Player 4 and Galaxy Player 5, iPod touch-like media players. You can grab the 4-inch model for $229, and the 5-inch model for $269 now.

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Samsung wrapped up their Galaxy event in London last night (above) where they made a November 3rd UK launch date official for the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note and also gave us a closer look into the S-Pen SDK and “S Choice” apps designed specifically for the Note’s built-in Wacom digitizer stylus tech.

Among the “S Choice” apps that will be available upon launch include OmniSketch, Zen Brush, ComicBook!, iAnnotate PDF, ZigZag virtual whiteboard, and Soonr Workplace. The majority of these apps are art-focused sketching, animation, and annotation apps, but Soonr Workplace is a productivity suite of sorts that includes document collaboration among other features.

Samsung will be making the S-Pen SDK available to devs starting in December so they can start developing apps specifically for the stylus. If you haven’t yet got a chance to check out the S-Pen in action, the video of yesterday’s event above has some live demos of artists creating some pretty incredible creations using the apps we just told you about.

The Galaxy Note packs in a 5.3-inch Super AMOLED display, 1.4 GHz dual core processor, 5100 mAmp battery, supports native 720p video, and has a 7 1/2 mm thin design. Samsung will continue to roll out the Note to the rest of major European markets by the end of November. You can check out the latest Samsung Galaxy advert here.

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Announced at IFA this year, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 has yet to make its way into our hands, most likely due to on going legal battles. Tonight we have good news however; the Galaxy Tab 7.7 passed through the desk of the FCC this afternoon, giving us pretty nice diagrams of the device. There’s no indication of carrier bands in this instance. We’re sure there’s more to come, but in the mean time check out our hands-on of the Galaxy Tab 7.7 after the break:

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After Samsung this morning announced they have sold 10 million Galaxy S II’s into retail channels, T-Mobile has made their own variant official with an October 10th pre-order date and $229 price tag.

While the majority of the specs on the device mirror other Galaxy S II variations, the real story here is support for T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ 42 Mbps network thanks to the switch from Samsung’s Exnos processor to a 1.5GHz Qualcom dual-core Snapdragon chip.

Other features are similar to the Epic 4G and other variants including a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED display, 8-megapixel main camera, NFC capabilities, 16GB internal storage, and Android 2.3.4.

The device will officially hit retail stores on October 12th. The $229 price point will of course require the usual two-year agreement in addition to a $50 rebate.

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BGR is reporting that Samsung will begin pre-orders through Best Buy in the US for their Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet that was originally announced back in March.

Pre-orders will start at $469.99 for the 16GB model and an extra hundred at $569.99 for the 32GB model. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 runs Android 3.1 Honeycomb, and includes a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, built-in WiFi, and a 1280 x 600 8.9-inch display. Of course the 8.9-inch model lands between Samsung’s 7-inch tab and iPad-like Galaxy Tab 10.1. The current models listed on Best Buy are WiFi only.

There is no word on exactly when the devices will ship, but rumor has it sometime before the end of the month with in-store pick ups available around the same time.  We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

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It’s official…Today Samsung and NVIDIA have outed their latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered device in the Galaxy smartphone (superphone?) family, which we now know will sport a 900 x480 4.19-inch “Super Clear” LCD display, Tegra 2 dual-core processor, front-facing 1.3mp camera, and a 5mp rear camera with LED flash that supports HD video recording. Full specs from the press release after the break.

The press release describes the Galaxy R as a”lightweight, slim and sleek metallic design, the GALAXY R Smartphone delivers incredible performance thanks to its Dual Core processor”… which is all true, but we can’t help but feel this device is specifically for those that don’t require everything packed into the obviously superior, but very similar, Galaxy S II. Either way, we aren’t complaining about having another powerful Android-based device on the market that resembles the S II.

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Looks like owners of that shiny new Touchwiz UX update for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 are waking up to a new “Movies” tab pushed out via an update earlier today. Touchwiz came preinstalled with a few video related apps including Google Videos, however none of these provided the option to purchase movies and TV from the Market.

If you haven’t received the update yet, be patient, as it should be rolling out slowly to all users running the Touchwiz UX upgrade within a day or two. You’ll have to accept the new terms of service upon updating to access the feature. We’ll let you know if we find anything else of interest in this latest update.

The TouchWiz UX update for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 brought a number of new features and UI enhanceements to the Honeycomb-based tablet. Some of the more notable features include a new dock-like app launcher, quick-access to settings, mobile printing, and the Swype app for tablets preinstalled. Check out our 5-minute video walkthrough here.

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