Sony Xperia U review: a little slice of Android that punches above its weight

There's an oft-used idiom about small packages, which frequently doesn't apply to the world of technology. That's to say that a diminished form factor often doesn't bring the "best things" with it. For example, Sony's NXT family members, revealed between CES and MWC, gifted consumers with the choice of three new handsets: the Xperia P, S and U. The last one in that list is by far the smallest, and in congruence with the general trend of mobile technology, the most lightly armored.

However, we're not ones to make assumptions, and heaven forbid we pre-judge something based on size alone. We're as willing to be surprised as anyone, and the new baby of the Sony bunch is as likely a candidate as any to throw us a curveball. Our initial impressions in Barcelona were largely positive, so this review -- as the firm says on its marketing material for the phone -- is all about (the Xperia) U.

Hardware

We're not going to belabor the point any more, but it's true that the Xperia U is the proverbial runt of the latest litter, measuring 12mm thick with a 3.5-inch display, some way off its larger S and P siblings (4.3-and 4-inches respectively). This equates to a deceptively miniature-looking facsimile of its larger brethren, and, it has to be said, an altogether palm-friendly slab of phone. There's no doubting its heritage though, with the tell-tale geometric design and protruding chin letting you know that this is definitely a Sony.

There's no doubting its heritage though, with the tell-tale geometric design and protruding chin letting you know that this is definitely a Sony.

About that chin. It undoubtedly catches the eye, though we're not sure if it's the bold-colored plastic caps (less striking tones are available) or just the illusion of extra length, but it's certainly a defining characteristic. In fact, along with the distinctive illuminating bar above it, much of the handset's visual character – like it or not – is derived from that bottom end.

The rest of the jet black face does little more than conceal the front VGA camera, speaker grill and sensors. The rear isn't exactly a feature-full landscape either, with a matte finish white battery cover and the usual holes for the camera, flash and speaker keeping the Sony Mobile logo company. The right-hand side is where you'll find all the buttons the Xperia U possesses: power / sleep, volume rocker and camera shutter, leaving the left-hand side bereft of anything bar the micro-USB port. Put this all together, and you get a fairly satisfactory, but not remarkable, slice of phone.

Much like the Xperia S before it -– given that the similarities are many –- the baby U has its fair share of potentially dust-gathering ridges. The angular design is partly responsible, but the LED bar and removable cap serve up multiple channels for the daily dirt buildup to hide in. It's not terribly problematic, just an unwelcome side effect of the otherwise functional form. The LED bar also poses another tiny problem, at least during your first few days with the phone. Hidden beneath it are the back, home and menu icons that correspond to the touch-sensitive navigation buttons above it. When whipping the handset out of your pocket to quickly do something, you can find yourself mashing the redundant LED strip (i.e. aiming for the icon) instead. Sure, you'll get used to it soon enough, but it's counter-intuitive to begin with, and only further highlights the curious use of space.

That is until you see the humble, transparent strip's party trick. When browsing images, that innocent piece of plastic will adopt a chameleon-like ability to match the dominant color of your photos and album art. The same is true for the prevailing tone of your theme. When the bar lights-up, it'll be with matching luminosity. Nothing more than a trick, but a cute one nonetheless.

Lastly, that screen. It might not have inherited the WhiteMagic sorcery bequeathed to the Xperia P, but it definitely has no problems making itself seen when drenched in solar gold. That FWVGA display does have the appearance of being somewhat long, but again, that might be more to do with the dimensions of the phone, rather than the aspect ratio (given that it's bang-on 16:9). We did notice, however, that under direct light, a dotted grid can clearly be seen. This is only while the screen is black or in stand-by, and doesn't affect the quality when in use. In our experience, photos and videos came out brightly with bold colors, and provided a pleasing visual experience, which brings us neatly to...

Camera

The Xperia S might be able to boast a double figure megapixel count (12 in fact) but for the U it's firmly back down in the more pedestrian single numbers: five. This might be a good thing, considering the phone only has 8GB of storage, and only four of those are available to the user. You should never be a slave to the peer pressure though, as five megapixels with a good sensor behind it can still be a winning combination. Is that the case here however? All in all, we're saying yes. This isn't a phone that particularly sells itself on its camera credentials, and as such, it just kind of gets on with the job. You can see from the sample shots yourself that quality is a bit of a mixed bag. Give this camera some good, healthy spoonfuls of sunshine, and it'll serve up vivid, reasonably sharp shots. However, snatch some of that light back (or, rather, have conditions do it for you) and the Xperia U starts to get a little upset.

This isn't a phone that particularly sells itself on its camera credentials, and as such, it just kind of gets on with the job.

Some of our sample shots were taken in a slightly overcast London. While light was in reasonable supply, the default settings (auto everything) left some of the images washed out, almost feeling like there is a thin, misty veil over the lens. When the sun did come out to play, though, this cleared up a treat, giving crisp and bright images. There are a selection of manual options for you to poke about with, which do give a modicum of control, and some novelty panorama / 3D modes for the occasional creative flirtation. Our guess, however, is that if you are eyeing this phone as something to potentially live with, the 5-megapixel shooter, set to default, will do just fine for those candid moments and occasional memories you need to preserve.

It might come as no surprise, then, that video mode fares just as sufficiently. You're not going to be filming any masterpieces, but it's adequate for YouTube fodder. Our sample video below caught lots of vibrant inner-city wildlife, but some pixelation can be seen when movement is sudden. All in all, it's a very average affair.

Software

Before you groan about the out-of-the-box Android 2.3.7 install, give us a moment. Yes, it's not ICS, but that's not necessarily a crisis. Sony's skinning is pretty light, and at the top level, doesn't look all that different from the UI of Android 4.0, even if you have to squint a little bit (and choose the blue theme). In a weird interpretation of "out with the old, in with the new," Sony says that ICS will come to the Xperia U in Q2 – so very soon – but will still be hidden under its Timescape UI. That means it'll largely look and feel the same anyway, but with the more recent features.

As is the law, the first thing you must do with a new telephone is flick the app screens left and right. No? So many snap judgements are made during those first vital seconds as you mindlessly flick left and right. Performing that less-than-scientific test here is reasonably gratifying. We already noted in our hands-on, that navigation was neither zippy nor sluggish, and that about sums it up. The 1GHz dual-core ST-Ericsson U8500 processor does its best to leave your experience unhindered. That said, once you've had the phone for a while, and more and more applications compete for resources, this might start to change. For now, however, we're quite pleased with the speed and ease at which we got around the user interface.

Beyond that UI, Sony has filled the Android room with a few bits of its own furniture, notably its audio and video services. That's hardly surprising given its recent departure from long-term beau Ericsson. Now that it's got the place all to itself, it's evidently keen to leave its mark, and that means Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited take pride of place. You don't have to use these, of course, as there are other media playing options. But, if you're already a signed-up member of the Sony-Unlimited club, then you'll jive to the Xperia U's beat right from the off. One corner of the Sony universe that doesn't get explored, however, is its PlayStation franchise. There's nary a mention of the PS Store or PlayStation certification, which might not be surprising given that the bigger Xperia P also seems to have been left off the invite list.

If you're still in any doubt about it, the short version is that the software is more of the same that we've come to expect from the Xperia brand. There's the good (some Android 4-esque features like app folders), the bad (McAffee's persistent antivirus) and the ugly (connecting to a Mac to transfer files needs a cable and more software). The good news is that most of the stuff that you don't like can either be uninstalled or easily ignored, leaving you to mold the phone to your liking.

Performance and battery-life

When you have less display to light-up, you stand a good chance of being able to do it for longer. The 1,320mAh battery is a sliver over that of the Xperia P's 1,305mAh, and this, factored with the lessened screen demand, do help keep the juice flowing a little longer. On our standard battery-draining test (WiFi on, brightness at 50 percent, and a continuous video playing) the Xperia U's engine room kept it huffing and puffing for a smidgen over five hours, which is better than the P could manage, and about on a par with the larger (and more power-endowed) Xperia S. That five hours isn't all that far off of the "up to" six hours in the press materials, which obviously tend to err more on the optimistic side.

The Xperia U managed to give us nearly two days of service, before it'd start pulling at our trouser leg, asking us to feed it.

What about when you're not settling in for marathon movie sessions, which, let's face it, is likely most of the time? In our time with it, the Xperia U managed to give us nearly two days of service, before it'd start pulling at our trouser leg, asking us to feed it. This is with WiFi and data always on, regularly checking emails, browsing the web and, well, the typical tasks of a fairly demanding user. This means that if you're away from the security of a wall port for more than 36 hours, then you'll be fine, but you'll likely want to be charging it most nights just in case, as is unfortunately the norm.

Of course, it's not just lighting up that screen, and juggling all the radio signals that drain the battery, those dual-cores will be taking a slice of the power-pie too. Yes, this brings us onto the more measured performance, and those all-important benchmarks. As you can see, the little Xperia U equaled, or saw off its Xperia P label-mate across the board showing that there's plenty of fight in the fella. In fact, it also pushes HTC's nearest current phone into the sand on most tests.

	Sony Xperia U	Sony Xperia P	HTC One V	Galaxy S Blaze 4G
Quadrant	2,125	2,161	1,636	3,600
Vellamo	870	845	1,155	1,009
AnTuTu	5,348	4,965	n/a	n/a
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms)	2,696	3,010	3,214	3,068
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps)	19	19	n/a	n/a
CF-Bench	5,346	4,855	n/a	n/a

These results are fairly congruent with our own experience. Playing Cut the Rope and other such reasonable light, fluid games felt no different (bar the screen real estate) than on, say, our Galaxy Nexus. Perhaps if we literally played one after the other, differences might begin to show, but if there are any, they aren't significant enough to show on their own.

Call- and browsing-wise, the phone's quad-band GPRS (850, 900, 1800, 1900) and HSPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100) dished up solid connections throughout our repeated testing both in central London and in more rural areas. Call performance and download speeds were always in tandem with what the UK O2 network could provide.

Wrap-up

We admit that we've spent a lot of time talking about what this phone is not. So, now we'll sum up exactly what it is. The Sony Xperia U is a good phone, if you are looking for something a little smaller. It is perfectly capable for most daily-use situations. It plays your media well, and snaps photos and videos that will be fine for most pedestrian users. The Xperia U is perfectly nice to look at, and serviceable in almost every respect. However, it is also a little short on the internal memory front, and with no option to fix that up at your own expense. It is also a fiddle to get working with your Mac if you want to free up some of that memory in batches (which you likely will).

Those are the facts. But what about that less tangible of qualities? How we actually feel about it. Well, this is where the Xperia regains some merit. Despite its fairly modest specification, and occasional software quirk, it possesses some endearing characteristics. In a world where the limits of the human hand are being tested, the Xperia U fits like a pair of comfortable shoes. Likewise, the initially harsh-looking geometric form, and superfluous chin give it a distinctive (no pun intended) edge over its target-market colleagues such as Samsung's Galaxy Ace 2, or HTC's One V. The kicker being that, at $330 SIM-free, it also out-prices the above pair by around $50. There's also the Xperia P to consider, which might command more of your money, but fixes some of our main issues with it. Ultimately it comes down to how appropriate these trade-offs are to your specific requirements. And loathed as we are to agree with marketing spiel, as Sony would put it – it is all about U.

via Engadget

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Orange San Diego Medfield phone: a closer look at Computex 2012 (update: video)

Well what do we have here? Yes, it's the Orange San Diego we first saw at Mobile World Congress and it's going on sale in the UK today for £200. This isn't just yet another Android smartphone, but one of the first Medfield-based handsets on the market. We caught this pre-production unit chilling out at the Intel booth here at Computex 2012 and decided to go up close and personal. First impressions? It's thin, light and feels great in the hand thanks to a pleasant soft-touch back. The Gigabyte-made device packs a 4-inch glass-capacitive 1024x600-pixel LCD (that's 300dpi), an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 CPU, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage.

While the screen looks decent enough, it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of viewing angles. The phone features Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) and runs most apps from the Google Play store directly via an emulation layer. Performance matched prior benchmarks and was on-par with current mid-range ARM-based Android handsets -- the experience was mostly smooth, but we noticed some lag when scrolling and zooming pages in the web browser. Battery life remains the major outstanding question when it comes to Medfield handsets, so expect more details once we have our very own review unit. In the meantime, check out the gallery below and hit the break for our hands-on video.

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Nyko's PlayPad and PlayPad Pro Android tablet controllers (hands-on)

There's a great video game land rush happening on the mobile front, as developers and hardware manufacturers work map out precisely how users will play with their smartphones and tablets. We've seen plenty of peripheral makers give it a shot, hoping to transform decidedly clunky touchscreen gameplay into something more akin to devoted consoles. Some, like Ion, have taken a fairly whimsical approach to the process, giving the world the iCade, a tablet controller shaped like a small arcade cabinet.

Nyko's going a much more straight forward route with PlayPad and PlayPad Pro, Bluetooth controllers that intend on bringing console gaming over to the mobile side. The PlayPad is the smaller of the two devices. It ships in a spring loaded eyeglasses-style case. Also inside is a small stand that you can unfold to prop up your Android tablet in portrait or landscape. The controller itself is quite small and fairly light. It has two circle pads on the front, a d-pad, four face buttons, shoulder buttons and a giant home button in the center.




We gave it a whirl on some titles and found it to be pretty responsive. The buttons function well and don't have the cheap feel that plagues so many of these types of devices. The PlayPad's biggest downfall, however, is the fact that thing is just too small for most grownup hands. Nyko gets points for making it quite portable, but the company sacrifices comfort in a big way. The company could learn a bit from PowerA, in terms of ergonomics here. And while the light weight it great when on the go, a little heft would have helped out as well.

The PlayPad Pro, meanwhile, does address some of those problem. A Nyko rep described it as a "fusion" between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 controllers -- and certainly those folks know how to make a controller. The Pro actually feels pretty good in-hand -- we could see ourselves using it for moderately sized gaming marathons. The controller lacks the carrying case and stand of its junior counterpart, however -- Nyko is seeing two very different case usages for these products, with the PlayPad traveling with users and the Pro stepping in for those who tend to hook their tablets up to a TV and essential use them as skinny touchscreen consoles.

Both controllers will run you "less than $50" at launch.

By Engadget

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Nintendo Wii U and games hands-on (video)

Nintendo's pre-E3 media briefing has wrapped up and the doors have opened, doors containing the latest and final revision of the Wii U hardware. Reggie & Co. failed to give us any concrete launch details beyond "holiday" this year, so we can't quite be sure of a date or a price or, really, much of anything. But, we do know about more of the launch titles. NintendoLand is, apparently, the premiere title, a sort of touchscreen-friendly version of Wii Sports that digs up many of the company's storied brands and squeezes them into mini-game format.

How does it play? And, how is the new, refined Wii U controller? Join us after the break to find out!

Hardware

The Wii U controller is subtly different than we saw last year. As unveiled in the pre-show briefing with Iwata-san the hardware's had some subtle tweaks made.

Biggest among them is the change from circle sliders to proper analog joysticks for each thumb, a change that might help to improve precision to some degree, but doesn't result in a drastically different feel. Speaking of feel, the controller is still very light, something we noted last year and immediately noticed this year as well. Since all the controllers are tethered we have to imagine they lack the onboard battery packs that will increase heft, but if you were worried that waving around a giant tablet will get tiring, well, don't sweat it.




Nintendo did confirm that you'll be able to use two of the things with the Wii U console, answering a question that we've had for the past year now and assuaging concerns that wireless bandwidth wouldn't be sufficient to support two wireless displays. How much extra controllers will cost, and how many developers will write games that expect players to have made that extra investment, remains to be seen.

Some of the buttons have been moved as well, notably Select and Start, which previously flanked the Home button. They've now moved to the side, beneath the main face buttons. A "TV" button has been added to the left of the power button and the triggers are slightly wider and more pronounced. The stylus moved too, how situated on the back-right rather than the left.

Like most Nintendo controllers, the Wii U gamepad is comfortable to hold in the hand and feels quite durable. Lengthy gaming sessions should be no problem.

NintendoLand and other software

There will be 12 total games for NintendoLand, but Nintendo's only showing off a subset of them for now. Why? Partly for the intrigue, but we're also guessing that some of them simply aren't done yet. The majority of these games are extremely simple affairs, titles that will entertain immediately but will live or die by their replayability. Again, it's just like Wii Sports, a mish-mash of games that somehow managed to be fresh even after hundreds of playings.

Will these games feel as fresh?

Luigi's Ghost Mansion

This is the game that was given a very, very lengthy demo in Nintendo's briefing and threatened to put nearly everyone in the Nokia Theater asleep. Fear not: it's a heck of a lot more fun to play than it is to watch. It borrows heavily from the Luigi's Mansion games but mixes that with Pac-Man-style gameplay for a multiplayer-match that is fun -- at least for a few minutes.

Up to four players can take Wiimotes and control multi-colored Luigis. These guys have only their flashlights and their wits to find the ghost. The ghost is, naturally, invisible unless illuminated by one of the players' flashlights -- flashlights that, naturally, have crummy batteries that die after about 30 seconds of use.

The players are otherwise blind and have to work together, communicating verbally to chase down the ghost through the maze. Meanwhile, the cunning ghost player, who has a Wii U gamepad, can see the entire board. He's trying to avoid the flashlights and sneak up on the human players to capture them. If he captures them he wins -- if he gets captured, the human players win.

If it sounds like fun, it is, and it doesn't hurt that the ghost is dressed up like Pac-Man. Will it stand up after a couple-dozen plays? That remains to be seen.

PanoramaView

Nintendo was showing off a feature by the name of PanaromaView, as well. Turn it on and the control pad will give you a list of locales you can choose from -- things like a double-decker bus and a tour of the cherry blossom trees of Japan. We opted for the latter, scrolled down with the d-pad and selected with the A button. Once fired up, the controller showed a trip down a river, with cherry blossoms in full bloom.

The key here is that you can move the controller around to get a full 360-degree picture. Imagine the Wii U controller as a window that you're looking through, move it up, down, left or right and you'll get a view of the image in the corresponding place. The video itself was crisp, though there were a few blurry spots, primarily toward the ground -- a similar effect to the one you get from Google Maps stitching. The company's rep was careful to point out that this is an "experience," not a game, which is to say the the company was just showing off the technology's potential, rather than a title the system will actually ship with the console. It's a feature that will be incorporated into titles to give players the full immersive experience.

Donkey Kong's Crash Course

One of the simpler Wii U NintendoLand games on display, Donkey Kong's Crash Course is a simple, physics-based race game in which you try to navigate a little car through a giant, zany maze. It's an entirely 2-D game and the controls are similarly limited -- just tilt the Wii U gamepad left or right to roll left or right, and then use the L or R buttons to raise or lower flippers. You can also rotate the thumbsticks to spin around big, spiraling sections of the course to let your little car through.

The trick, of course, is that if you hit anything too quickly or flip your little car over you crash and have to go back to the last checkpoint. How exactly this has anything to do with Donkey Kong or, indeed, the princess he's trying to race toward escapes us, but the game is reasonably fun. For a minute or two, at least.

Wrap-up

A year later, the Wii U looks and feels much like it did when we played with it last year. Still we've only had time with a selection of mini-games and still we don't know how much it'll cost or when it'll ship. With no proper guidance on those fronts it's hard to make a prediction on just how much of a must-buy the console is this holiday season, but surely by now most Nintendo fans will have already made up their minds on that front.

By Engadget

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Microsoft SmartGlass hands-on

Sure today's Microsoft E3 keynote was jam-packed full of high octane explosions, but the biggest excitement from the hardware-free event was arguably SmartGlass, a new technology from Redmond that promises to help to bring together users' diverse array of screens. When it was initially leaked ahead of the event, SmartGlass looked to largely be a somewhat straightforward AirPlay competitor. Judging by Microsoft's flashy demo video, however, the company is clearly looking to build it into its own beast all together. Thankfully, we got to play with it a bit -- albeit for a very short amount of time, given the fairly early state of the technology.

Let's start thing off by clarifying a big question surrounding the somewhat enigmatic demo that we saw at today's event: yes, SmartGlass gives developers the potential to turn smartphones and tablets into a controller for the Xbox 360. As suspected, it will likely be integrated into more casual games -- after all, we shudder at the thought of controlling, say, Halo 4 using just a touchscreen. As is the nature of the product, the company isn't letting the details flow too freely here, but in a demo we saw of the technology tonight, a Microsoft rep name-dropped a title called Home Run Stars -- a baseball game, as you've likely already gathered from the fairly straightforward name.

We didn't get to see the game in action, but the rep mentioned a gameplay scenario in which one player uses the Kinect to bat and the other pitches with the touchscreen -- again, not too dissimilar from the kind of dual-screen gaming we've seen with the Wii U thus far. And you can also invert that game play, if you so choose, pitching on the Kinect and batting with a tablet or smartphone. Thing is, Microsoft is looking to make this whole process open for developers. As the rep put it, "what we've done is create a platform." In other words, Redmond is putting forward the tools here and letting the content developers play around, to come up with their own functionality based on SmartGlass.

While the baseball title was more in the talking stages tonight, we got the see SmartGlass in action with a couple of demoable titles, including, most notably, Ascend: New Gods. Get the game rolling and the title will pop up on your SmartGlass-enabled device. When it doesn't have tailored information to display, the device goes into "listening mode," essentially awaiting the game to give it its next set of instructions (via WiFi).

The key functionality in this demo was a map. The question of what one does with a SmartGlass device while playing with a standard controller was answered, in this case, with "you put it on the table in front of you," so you can play the game and glance down at the map every time you need to figure out where you're going. Once the player left the cave, the handset switched back into listening mode. When confronted by a boss, it switched gears again, offering up boss stats, so you know whether it's time to fight or to run, based on your own status. Again, this is all about augmenting your gameplay.

Microsoft also showed off an as-of-yet untitled karaoke game, again displaying a whole new set of functionality. Here, the SmartGlass-enabled device essentially gives other players something to do while you're singing your heart out. The device more or less turns into a karaoke remote. You can scan song titles and lyrics, and when you land on a track you like, enter it into the device and it will show up in a queue on the screen -- just like a real karaoke joint, without the two drink minimum.

Naturally, SmartGlass isn't just about gaming. Movies and TV also serve as a key component. Microsoft once again trotted out Game of Thrones as part of tonight's demo. The HBO series does serve as a great example of the technology's potential, helping viewer get insight into the show's fairly complex mythology. You can view a map and get additional content like cast information and commentaries from the directors and writers. You can also check out the detailed character genealogy and episode timelines, in case you get lost.

For the movie, the company gave us the Jack Black vehicle, School of Rock. Here you can get character info based on a given scene. Characters will pop up on your mobile device as they enter and leave. You can also skip ahead with a scrolling layout, picking and choosing scenes based on characters. And, of course, you can watch a video on your tablet and pick up where you left off on the big screen. Oh yeah, and remote control functionality is built in as well, once you move over to the TV.

Again, we're very much in the early stages here. SmartGlass is set to launch at some point in the fall, so we've still got a ways to go. There's lots of other functionality we've yet to see, like Web browsing, in which you use your tablet or phone as a keyboard for the TV-screen-based internet experience. Much of the functionality will also be up to the partners -- after all, Microsoft is trying to keep things open on its end and let the developers go wild coming up with new functionality. As far as partners go, MS says the content demoed is likely indicative of some of the launch partners, and we've seen some pretty high profile ones thus far, including HBO (Game of Thrones) and EA (Madden).

And platforms? Redmond's still promising us the moon, including Windows on the phone and PC (duh), iOS and Android. Asked whether the latter two would be limited in terms of features, Microsoft sort of skirted the question, saying that that would be, "up to the partners." So, who knows on that front. All said, though, we've got what's shaping up to be an awfully compelling product here.

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Samsung demos Series 5 Ultra Touch and Series 5 Ultra Convertible Ultrabooks, we go hands-on

Well, look at what we have here! We just swung by Samsung's booth at Computex, and the outfit is showing off not one, but two touch-enabled variations of its Series 5 Ultrabooks. These include the Ultra Touch, a classic clamshell laptop, along with the Ultra Convertible, whose 13-inch display folds all the way back (not unlike the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga). Both devices are on their way stateside; it's just not clear when or how much they'll cost. Until then, we've got hands-on preview photos below, along with detailed impressions and a pair of walk-through videos. So join us, won't you?

Look and feel

Samsung didn't come all the way to Taipei to show you the great things it can do with metal unibodies and backlit keyboards. No, the real story here are the different form factors that are growing up around Windows 8, so it's not surprising to us that the overarching industrial design has taken a bit of a back seat. These are, more or less, variations on the same Series 5 Ultrabooks we already saw: a mix of metal and plastic, with not-backlit keys and 1366 x 768 displays. Tasteful stuff, but there's also's also a reason Samsung stuck these in its second-to-lowest product tier. (Across Sammy's lineup, Series 7 and 9 are higher-end.)

In terms of ports, you're looking at the same setup across both Ultrabooks: USB 3.0, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI, a 4-in-1 memory card reader and a combined mic / headphone jack. If you've been following along, you already know USB 3.0 is now a requirement in all Intel-endorsed Ultrabooks, but we still appreciate seeing HDMI and Ethernet on a machine like this.

Keyboard and trackpad

This is the same shallow but well spaced 'board you'll find on Samsung's other Series 5 Ultrabooks. Interestingly, the trackpad differs across the two devices: the clamshell Ultra Touch has a touchpad with discrete buttons, while the Ultra Convertible has a more spacious clickpad. We'll be curious to see if the smaller of the two pads meets Microsoft's requirements for gesture-enabled touchpads, though we have no reason to believe it doesn't.

Display

Zach Honig, the man responsible for those photos you see up there, said it best: "That is one glossy display!" And it is, which is surprising given that Samsung's PC group has a history of using matte screens with wide viewing angles (Sammy does have some panel know-how by way of its TV division, don'tcha know). The thing is also a fingerprint magnet. Our quibbles about the screen glare aside, both screens were exceedingly responsive to taps and swipes, even in prototype form. Just have a cheese cloth nearby to keep it looking pristine.

Form factors

There's not much to say about the clamshell notebook: even a five year-old can latch onto the concept of touching a screen. In the case of the convertible, Samsung seems to have run into the same problem as Lenovo, which is to say that keyboard is exposed when the screen is in tablet mode. As ever, it feels strange to cradle a tablet-type device whose backside is comprised of various keys. We'll also say that the hinge mechanism felt slightly loose, but we're willing to chalk that up to pre-production kinks.

Specs

Samsung is resolutely not talking about processors or RAM today, though we noticed a display card listing a 500GB hard drive. This isn't surprising, since Samsung already puts 500GB HDDs in its entry-level Ultrabooks. (The ones already shipping are coupled with some flash storage for faster boot-ups, though we haven't received confirmation that'll be the case here.) At least one of the units we tested had about 128GB of total storage, which tells us solid-state drives will probably be offered.

via Engadget

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Samsung teases Series 5 Hybrid PC, a Windows 8 tablet with magnetic keyboard dock and pen support

You wanted Windows 8 tablet / laptop mash-ups, you got 'em! On the heels of some rather inventive product launches from Acer and ASUS here at Computex, Samsung is teasing a Win8 device of its own, the Series 5 Hybrid PC. For now, Samsung's not sharing many technical details -- we don't even know the screen size! -- but the concept, at least, is self-explanatory: this is a Transformer-like tablet that slots into an accompanying keyboard dock. In an interesting twist, though, this device doesn't make use of your run-of-the-mill latch mechanism; instead, the slate attaches magnetically.

The Hybrid is rated for 10 hours of battery life and has a pair of 2- and 8-megapixel cameras. It also supports pen input, and will come bundled with the same S-Pen and S-Memo software used on the Galaxy Note 10.1 (but modified for Windows, of course). This might be a good time to clarify that unlike the 10.1 (or any other Galaxy Tab, for that matter), this is not an ARM-based slate, but rather, an X86 PC. This means, of course, that it runs full Windows 8, and not just the RT version. As it happens, Engadget had the chance to check out a prototype in advance of the launch, and it was running a two-watt Intel Clover Trail CPU. At the time, a Samsung rep told us the company was considering an ultra low voltage notebook-grade processor. Other possible specs: a 1080p display option, with some lower, unspecified resolution offered as well. Lastly, the early model we saw had a USIM slot, a microSD reader and a Superspeed USB port. Keep in mind, though, that all these details are subject to change.

Back when we got a sneak peek at the Hybrid, we handled a non-powered unit, and members of the press were not permitted to take photos or video that day. We can't speak to the software experience, then, but we did find the build quality to be solid. If the idea of a magnetic hinge gives you the willies, this one seemed quite sturdy -- we don't see the slate slipping out of its cradle without any effort on the part of the user. At 747 grams (1.65 pounds) and 9mm (0.35 inches) thick, it feels denser than similar-looking products like the ASUS Transformer Prime, but then again, this is a fully functioning PC. Though Samsung won't confirm the screen size, a quick once-over told us it measures between 10 and 11 inches diagonally, matching other Win8 tablets announced this week. For now, this blend of facts and educated guesses will have to suffice, but we'll naturally hit you back with more particulars as we hear them.

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