Word: samsung
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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November has been a busy month for Cingular, which launched the Sync music phone and BlackJack Windows Mobile smartphone, both by Samsung, and then the eagerly awaited Palm Treo 680. My original intention was to review the Treo 680, but I decided there just isn't enough to say about it: it's no slimmer than its predecessors, and Cingular will have to pack better, user-friendly e-mail software into it if it's going to attract non-corporate types, or indeed anybody but Palm customers in search of a replacement to their Treo...
...Sync, aka Samsung SGH-a707, is pretty much RAZR slim. It's got a respectable talk-time battery life of up to four hours and a gorgeous, 2.5-in. LCD screen. Since it connects to Cingular's new highspeed data network, it can download files at broadband speed. Although the network is key to much of Cingular's ambitions, it is not required to access music, however. The Sync is so-named because you load music from your PC. Any MP3 or unprotected WMA files will transfer, but so will subscription downloads from Rhapsody, Napster, AOL and MTV Urge...
...dominant force in computer software for so long, so it's had a really hard time with Apple's supremacy in the digital music space. Microsoft first tried to go after the iPod/iTunes juggernaut by providing the backbone software for a coalition of digital media companies: Creative, iriver, Samsung and others on the hardware side; Napster and even competitors such as Yahoo! and RealNetworks on the software side. It teamed with music muscle MTV Networks to build the smartest service of them all, Urge. But marketing never followed Urge's soft launch, and it's still foundering. Unable to lead...
...videogame business, where there are only a few companies capable of launching a platform at any given time, the Zune enters a field already littered with MP3 players. Nearly every MP3 player that's not an iPod can connect to a monthly subscription service: any new flash player from Samsung, iriver, SanDisk or Creative will synch with Napster, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Yahoo's Y! Unlimited or MTV Urge. In fact, even Samsung's newest Cingular phone, appropriately dubbed the Sync, can do this...
...player, the Zune has some technical failings. Its built-in radio is too staticky, no match for the radios found in iriver and Samsung MP3 players. It can't record radio streams, and there isn't even a way to program station presets. And unlike those competing devices, it doesn't have a built-in voice recorder. Also, while I found most of the interface to be pleasant, I did run into some strange starting and stopping issues. For instance, say you're listening to a song and browsing through your music when you're suddenly interrupted by someone...