Samsung's Galaxy is a 11.9 millimeter-slim handset that features a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera, and also comes equipped with GPS, Wi-Fi and and WCDMA support. Even more, the phone calls attention to the haptic feedback on its virtual keyboard, which is a first for a major touchscreen smartphone.

Because the AMOLED screen reportedly draws less power than the iPhone's TFT-LCD screens do, the Galaxy apparently has a longer battery life, making this—coupled with the haptic feedback—more mainstream-consumer friendly for those who have yet to purchase a smartphone. Although pricing and release dates are not finalized, the Galaxy will supposedly be available in Europe by the end of this month, and the rest of the world in the second half of 2009. [PC World via Talk Android]

At first glance, this SoundBar doesn't look like it can do much, because it's rather thin and not very heavy. However, its accompanying subwoofer is quite a bit more substantial, supplying the power for both units. That SoundBar's diminutive size is a big advantage, because it's small enough to be hung just under a wall-mounted flat panel display. It holds the controls and DVD player, while the subwoofer can be hidden any on the floor, and does the heavy lifting. Put a DVD or CD into the SoundBar, and its door gracefully slides aside, inviting you to mount the disk inside with a reassuring click. Both pieces of this system are exceedingly handsome, and would go well in even the most chic home theater.

The first thing we wanted to try on the HTS8100 was a couple of CDs we normally use to test sound quality. We turned the volume up all the way using the beautifully designed piano black remote control, and we were astonished at this speaker's clean, crisp and extraordinarily powerful sound.

Even sitting 12 feet away, there was still enough stereo separation to create a well-defined soundstage, with plenty of presence and depth. It was even able to simulate surround sound rather convincingly when we placed it into multichannel mode, and there were a couple of passages where we could have sworn there were speakers behind us.

The 120-watt subwoofer rattled the rafters here at the Midwest Test Facility, literally scaring some of our coworkers with its clean, tight bass. Meanwhile, the precise tweeters offered crispy and sweet-sounding highs and upper midrange. The midrange sounded a bit hollow for our tastes, but was still able to pull its weight, accurately reproducing voices that didn't sound the best we've heard, but acceptable nonetheless. Overall, the system put out some extraordinary sound, and it surprised everyone with its force, power and high quality.

Next it was time to test the included iPod dock, and that also worked well. On a system of this high quality, the sonic deficiencies of compressed music were immediately obvious, but the SoundBar still handled the sound well. Connecting into the side of the speaker, the docking unit lets you plug in just about any iPod. When you place your iPod inside, after a quick touch on the remote, the iPod's functions are all available via remote control. We also like the extended control that shows you all of the iPod's functions on your TV screen.

Next we mounted a DVD into the sliding vertical compartment, and here's where we realized the system's forte. Dialog came through loud and clear, and the movie's explosion scenes must've made the neighbors jump. Its simulated surround sound was not quite as realistic as an actual 5.1 system with rear speakers positioned behind us, but we found it good enough to satisfy our surround sound jones. It would be perfect for someone with a room not well-suited to 5.1 speakers, where the rear surround speakers might be inconvenient or impossible to place behind the listeners. That said, there's an astonishing amount of audio coming out of this slim SoundBar, and we were all quite impressed.

As for the video scaling, its Faroudja upscaling system, attempting to turn garden-variety 480p video into 1080i or even 1080p high definition video, did an admirable job, but we've never been a fan of upscaled video. It's always a poor stepchild to the real thing, and tends to amplify flaws as well as sharpen the video...somewhat. We've never seen upscaling that was worthy of being called true HDTV, and the output of this Philips unit was no exception. However, the system's enhancements were every bit as good as the best 1080p upscaling we've seen thus far on players with similar technology such as those from Oppo. Even so, the whole up-rezzing ruse is one of those selling points that looks great on paper, but has yet to measure up in reality.

Summing up, this Philips HTS8100 Ambi Sound DVD Home Theater System is easy to set up, gives you a lot more options for speaker placement than you'd have with a 5.1 surround system, delivers decent simulated surround sound, is unobtrusive in the living room, looks great and sounds even better. We think it's an outstanding value, especially at its $700 street price.

These Dell Precision laptops are built for speed, and this latest iteration doesn't disappoint. Those faster processor choices range up to the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz T7700 with 4MB of cache. And it's not just that Core 2 Duo chip that speeds things up, either—these processors have an 800MHz front-side bus, giving this Precision M4300 a significant speed advantage over its M65 predecessor with its 667MHz front-side bus. According to Intel, that little mod will show you a 20% increase in throughput. Also helping out those who have the system maxed out with 4GB of RAM is its new 36-bit addressing, which allows those who are running a 64-bit operating systems to see and utilize all 4GB.

That Santa Rosa chipset also offers Intel Dynamic Acceleration (IDA), which allows the CPU to be smarter, jacking up its clock speed when it's working on a single-threaded application. For example, that means the 2.4GHz processor gets overclocked to 2.6GHz when only one of the cores is being used in a single-threaded application. Neat.

Dell has also fired up the graphics on this baby, upgrading to the latest NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M graphics card, resulting in what Dell calls a 110% speed improvement in graphics performance versus its M65 forebear. A 160GB drive spinning at 7200RPM also adds to the speedfest.

Then there's that 32GB solid-state disk, which we first thought would offer faster speeds and longer battery life. But no. Dell admits this is not so, at least not yet. It's not any faster than a normal 2.5-inch spinning drive, and uses roughly the same amount of energy, too, so you're not going to see increased battery life with one of these drives on board. Another downside is that if you choose the 32GB solid-state disk, that's it. There's no room for another drive inside. Dell says this solid-state drive choice is aimed at those who are looking for durability and reliability, and told us speedier and more efficient solid-state drives were on the way. Dell didn't say anything about the drive's pricing, either, and it's not showing up on the Dell store yet. But the Dellians said it will ship next week. More expensive, not faster, same battery life? Forget it. Looks like this SDD release was more for bragging rights than anything else.

Dell has also updated the line's Wi-Fi capabilities, now capable of optional draft-N, and they've mounted dual hyperband diversity antennas in the display back for what the company says is five times better performance for Wi-Fi and mobile broadband. And now Dell is offering a choice of the big three for wireless broadband: Verizon, Sprint and now AT&T. To hell with that EDGE shit—EV-DO Rev A, here we come.

Nice laptops. They're heavy (starting at 6.2 lbs) and not exactly beautiful, but you'll have a hard time finding a faster PC in this form factor. Pricing starts at $1750, but fully loaded with the fastest processor and largest disk will jack the price up to around $3200. They're shipping now.

Product Page [Dell]

That little screen below the dial is an OLED display where caller ID info pops up if you get a phone call. And, it vibrates when that call comes in, letting you answer it or discreetly send it off to voice mail land. Pair it up with an A2DP stereo Bluetooth headset, and you can control your tunes from your watch, too. It's set for a fall release, and it'll cost you $399. Now this is a non-geeky looking Bluetooth watch we could live with. – Charlie White

With its 7-in-1 flash memory card reader, it's a great dumping ground for your digital photos when you're in the field, backing up those cards so you can wipe them clean for another round of shooting. Meanwhile, that 160GB of storage space on its internal hard drive gives you a fast cornfield onto which you can load lots of video. We tested it with DivX and AC3 files, which it played back flawlessly on its 3.6-inch 320x240 LCD screen. Here's more about our hands-on experience:

Boot up the Wolverine ESP and you can immediately tell there is a spinning hard drive inside. You can feel its slight vibration in your hand as you hold the palm-sized unit, which is slightly larger than a deck of cards. However, at slightly less than an inch thick and weighing 10.2 ounces with its battery inside, it's a bit portly for our taste.

The Wolverine's creators were apparently sensitive to battery drain while the unit accessed and used its hard drive, the cost the unit judiciously puts the hard drive to sleep when it's not in use for a while. In our testing, this technique gave the unit plenty of juice to play more than three movies in a row without running out of power.

Even so, we found ourselves longing for flash memory inside this unit rather than a spinning hard disk. But that may not be practical yet. Now that we've heard there are 160GB solid-state flash drives soon to be available, we're hoping that someday soon such a disk might be put into a player like the Wolverine ESP, but at this point that would probably be prohibitively expensive.

In addition to its audio/video playback capabilities and storage convenience, the ESP even has an FM radio on board that doesn't sound half bad. Its user interface is not exactly a smooth as an iPod, but it works well enough, using a four-point joystick for navigation, the middle of which you push down to select an item. We found ourselves accidentally selecting an item from time to time, but after spending a few days with the unit, a we got accustomed to its quirks.

It was easy to place movies, video and photos on the Wolverine's hard drive, where it was instantly recognized after plugging into a USB port on a PC. There was no conversion of video files necessary as it is with the Sony PSP, and we just drag and dropped files into their already designated, straightforward folders on the Wolverine's hard disk. Today's Wolverine is more versatile than those of the past, supporting video files in MPEG-1, MPEG-4, WMV9 and the aforementioned XviD and DivX formats.

When you select a video file, you have to wait for the movie to load first, and we counted 17 seconds until a 90-minute DivX video file was loaded and ready to play. The 320x240 screen had just enough pixels for its 3.6-inch size, doing a superb job of playing back the video files we tested. Our only complaint is that this isn't a 16x9 screen, and most of the movies we viewed left too much empty space at the top and bottom of the screen because of their wide aspect ratio.

The Wolverine also works well as a music player, although its volume might not prove to be loud enough for a noisy environment such as aboard an airplane. Still, we found its sound to be adequate, doing justice to MP3 files as well as, WMA, OGG, WAV, AAC and CDA files. The unit is also adept at displaying photos, and it really is a trusty field companion for digital photographers, with its ability to store and display tons of JPEG, TIF, text and RAW images.

It's also pretty cool the way you can record video directly onto the unit from a TV, DVD player or camcorder, but you'll need to buy the optional cradle for $69.99 if you want to do that. It would have been nice to have some sort of timer to use it as a full-fledged personal video recorder.

Overall, the Wolverine ESP 160GB does what it says it will do, but not entirely gracefully. Its best feature is that relatively gigantic 160GB hard disk, giving you the freedom to store just about any data you might need when you're on the road. It's fairly rugged, too, where we must admit that it survived a drop of about 3 inches onto a hard desktop while it was playing, and still kept on going without a hitch.

The Wolverine ESP does a lot, but you'll pay a price for that versatility and voluminous disk space: it's $549.99. But if you're looking for a competent video player and a great backup system for your field photography, it gets the job done and would be a smart choice. – Charlie White

Product Page [Wolverine]

HD Connect down-converts your 720p or 1080i signal into a 640x480 video stream, where the horizontal part is anamorphically compressed for transport, and then is stretched back out to that typical widescreen 16x9 format on your laptop in the field. How does it look, and is it worth $50?

Its video output looks significantly better than the stock Slingbox Pro's standard definition video, but there is a catch. You're only going to get near-HD-quality when you stream the Slingbox Pro's video within your own network. That makes it ideal for, say, watching some HD porn in your bedroom when your Slingbox is located elsewhere in the house on your wired or wireless G network. But its resolution is limited to 320x240 when you access your Slingbox from outside your own network via the InterWebs.

Here's a press photo of HD Connect, and next to it is the actual unit, not nearly as pretty as its PR propaganda:

A handy feature of the Slingbox Pro is its ability to connect and control four devices, and HD Connect now lets you do that with a component signal while also letting you pass that component video through to whatever viewing device you wish to use in your home theater as well.

HD Connect plugs into a port on the back right, which looks exactly like a HDMI port, but isn't:

The Slingbox Pro with HD Connect's improved quality was also noticeable using the SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows software on my Motorola Q Smartphone. Don't try watching an entire football game or a movie on the Motorola Q, though, because its lame-ass battery will give up the ghost after about an hour using the SlingPlayer Mobile software.

Overall, I give the Slingbox Pro HD Connect dongle a big thumbs-up, while at the same time wishing that it would've been included in the package with the Slingbox Pro. For more details, check out my full review at Consumer Electronics Net. – Charlie White

Slingbox Pro HD Connect [Consumer Electronics Net]

The only downside was that they're not quite as comfortable as their nearest competitor, the similar-sounding $500 Shure E5c high-end earphones I've been using around these parts for the better part of two years. But I got used to the triple.fi earphones, nestling them snugly into my ears with the included fit kit. Another nicety was their grand arrival enclosed in a swank roadie case with my name embossed on the front.

See a pic of that case and more commentary, after the jump.

In one part of my review, I rigged up a testing scenario where I listened to an identical mono signal in one Shure E5c earphone in one ear and one triple.fi 10 Pro earphone in the other, and even after listening to almost every type of music from a variety of sound sources using this system, it was difficult for me to tell the difference between these two worthy competitors. So, I have to give the nod to the triple.fi earphones since they cost $100 less.

The first batch of a limited edition series of these earphones are just becoming available now, and another batch will be created sometime next month. They're priced identically to the standard edition at $400, but they come with this way-cool roadie case and will be individually marked and numbered as a collector's item.

Nice cans. I'd still be listening to them now, but I gotta work and it's hard to concentrate on anything else with the sound of heaven in your head. Spectacular. 9.6 out of 10 stars. – Charlie White

Full Review: Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 Pro Earphones [Digital Producer]

As for the screen's brightness, well, technically, it is brighter, just don't expect to have it leave your jaw on the floor, especially while viewing indoors. The new earbuds that Apple is including with these iPods now has silicone rubber edges, so they're no longer as torturous to wear. What's more, there more bass heavy, pleasing today's popular music fans, what with their hip hop and heavy metal.

It's worth noting that the side-by-side comparison shots do show how much better the enhanced 5G iPod handles colors when compared to the older 5G. Full reviews are forthcoming, so strap in. – Nicholas Deleon

Apple Computer iPod with video (Enhanced Fifth-Generation) [iLounge]

The Clamp-On Surge Protector is the one we're looking forward to the most. No more piles upon piles of cables on the floor. Finally cables will be able to be run without touching the ground, and staying out of sight. Clamp it anywhere—computer desk, home theatre stand, bathroom, work bench, etc. It will be available for $69 $35 and include six outlets and a 10-foot power cord.

The Concealed Surge Protector is built for organization. It will power your gadgets via 11 outlets while organizing and hiding cables away. Safety and organization is key—the Concealed Surge Protector is great for kid-proofing a house. $49.

The Compact Surge Protector is a small surge protector that provides organization in a nice white bundle. There are a total of eight outlets—four regular and four for block-sized AC adapters. It also includes phone cable protection and will retail for $39.

Hit the jump for more photos of each. – Travis Hudson