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APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR THE FOCUS ISSUES IN THE VIDEO - I WAS USING A NEW CAMERA THAT I WASN'T USED TO YET.

Last week I had the privilege of being able to attend Samsung Canada’s Holiday media preview event. There they showed me some of the latest tech that they are bringing to the Canadian market, including a few products that had  previously never been shown in public. While I didn’t have time to look at everything on display, I did shoot three videos of some of the coolest items, and will be posting them to the Tech Blog in three parts.

The first video, above, focuses on the new cellphones and tablets coming this fall. While they are all coming out before Christmas, they couldn’t provide exact release dates or pricing, and in the case of the new Tab they couldn’t even tell me which carrier it will be released on (but I have a good idea!). There were three phones - the Telus Samsung Galaxy S II X (what a mouthful!), the Rogers Samsung Galaxy S Glide, and the white Bell Samsung Galaxy S II. The lone tablet was the LTE version of the Galaxy Tab 8.9.

All these devices should be coming to Future Shop soon. 

Phones & Tablets shown:
 

Above you can see the line-up of devices I was shown, from left to right they are the Telus Galaxy S II X HSPA+ smartphone, Bell Galaxy S II HSPA+ smartphone in white, Rogers Galaxy S Glide QWERTY Keyboard slider smartphone, and the Galaxy Tab 8.9” LTE Tablet.

Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE - price and carrier TBA

The Galaxy Tab 8.9” is a slightly smaller version of the already available Galaxy Tab 10.1” (which is available at Future Shop here), with an LTE data connection.

LTE is the next generation of wireless cellular data, and promises speeds of up to 75 Mbps, which is faster than many people's land-line internet connection! Both Bell and Rogers recently launched their LTE network in select Canadian cities, and will be bring a variety of LTE compatible phones and tablets to the market this fall. While I wasn’t told which carrier is going to be selling the Tab 8.9", since Rogers has already announced that they will be launching an HTC LTE Tablet, it only makes sense that this Samsung one is coming to Bell. (but I could be wrong!)

Other than the LTE speeds, and screen size, the Tab 8.9” is basically the same device as the Tab 10.1” – a fast dual-core Tegra 2 processor, Honeycomb Android OS, and a beautiful 1280x800 PLS display wrapped up in a super thin form factor.

You can learn more about Bell's LTE network here, and the Rogers LTE network here.

Telus Galaxy S II X - release date and price TBA

It seems that Telus is always the last carrier to get one of the new generation Samsung phones each product cycle. However because of this they also always seem to get the best one! The Samsung Galaxy S II X is closely related to the beautiful, and huge selling, Galaxy S II (which is available on Bell), but has a bigger 4.5” screen, 1.5Ghz processor, and supports Dual-cell HSPA+ technology for download speeds of up to 42 Mbps, which is pretty close to LTE speeds (without the associated LTE data rate costs!).

Instead of me going into great detail about what else makes this such a stand-out phone, why don’t you check out TeddyK’s post on the Tech Blog – he has being playing with one for a while and has put up his thoughts on it here.

Rogers Galaxy S Glide - release date and price TBA 

Probably the biggest surprise for me of the event was the phone you see above – the Rogers Galaxy S Glide. This sliding QWERTY phone was rumoured to be coming to AT&T in the US earlier this year, then nothing was heard about it again. I was pretty shocked, and pleased, to see that is coming to Canada first, on Rogers.

The Galaxy S Glide is a hybrid of technology from the original Galaxy S series and the Galaxy S II. It has a 4” Super AMOLED screen, not the ‘Plus’ screen found in the Galaxy S II, but does have the 1.2Ghz dual-core processor & 8MP camera from the newer phones. There is a four row QWERTY keyboard with keys that have a very nice feel and size, and while it is thicker than a lot of the newest phones, it is still pretty thin for a QWERTY slider. It also runs Android 2.3.5 – the latest version of Gingerbread.

The Glide a great device, since I believe that there is definitely a need for a physical keyboard if you are a heavy email user. For business users perhaps wanting to try out Android, after being stuck on a Blackberry for so long, this will be the perfect phone.

I was not given an ETA, or price, but I expect it to be released by Rogers in October or November, and it should be priced competitively with most other higher-end Android phones – which means $99 on a 3yr contract.

Bell Galaxy S II White - release date and price TBA 

The last phone I saw, which to be honest I only briefly covered in the video above, is the white version of the Bell Galaxy S II. Widely considered one of the best phones you can buy today, the white one will appeal to that select group of white gadget fanatics – it will complement their white Galaxy Tab 10.1, white laptop, white home phone, white USB key, white…etc. etc. While I am not one of those fanatics myself, I’ll have to admit is does look pretty darn sexy in white.

For more info on the Galaxy S II you can read about the original here. The white model is coming to Bell, and while the release date is and price is TBA, I am sure it will be very soon, and cost the same as the black model, $150 on a 3yr term.

Slide show of some additional pictures of the new phones from the event: