After a year on the market, the Samsung Galaxy Mini is certainly due for a refresh.

That said, GSMArena seems to have received promotional materials and photos for the Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 from an anonymous tipster. It bares a resemblance to the Galaxy Ace in many ways, with that flat home button and silver bezel.

Codenamed Jena, the Galaxy Mini 2 sports a larger 3.3-inch HVGA display, a considerable step up from its predecessor. Past that, we’re also seeing a processor upgrade in the form of an 800MHz chip along with 3GB of on-board storage.

Android 2.3 Gingerbread will be present and accounted for, as will a 3-megapixel camera and support for AT&T’s 7.2Mbps HSDPA network.

According to the materials, the mini 2 will show up “February 2012,” making an MWC launch sound pretty logical.

Mark one up for Samsung. After months of legal and PR battles, the South Korean company is finally able to sell and market their iPad clone in Germany. Just don’t call it an iPad clone anymore. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N (pictured left) is slightly different from the iPad — but that’s all that matters.

Samsung released the Galaxy Tab 10.1N late last year. This version features a silver boarder around the screen’s black bezel. The speakers were also relocated in a stereo configuration and now flank the screen. The original GalTab 10.1 was a blatant iPad ripoff. This version at least looks slightly different.

The Dusseldorf Regional Court said there are “clear differences” between the 10.1N and Apple’s iPad, essentially clearing it for retail sale. This ruling shoots down Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction. No doubt Apple’s all-star legal team will fight the decision, but they’re quickly losing support. The reworked 10.1N at least appears to be significantly different from the iPad — at least to the point that any 10.1 slate can look different from another one.

Thanks to our friends at Antengo, who absolutely love the TechCrunch readers, we have two huge prizes to give away this week: an Xbox Kinect and a Samsung Galaxy S II. There will be two winners for this giveaway and two ways to win for each prize.

You will have until February 12th, this coming Sunday, to win the Xbox Kinect and you will have until next Friday, February 17th to win the Samsung Galaxy S II. You can enter both giveaways. For all of the husbands/ wives, boyfriends/ girlfriends, and significant others out there, this is just in time for Valentine’s Day.

So, are you feeling lucky?

If you want a chance at winning the Xbox Kinect, follow the steps below:

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Leave us a comment below telling us what you are doing for Valentine’s Day.

For those of you who want a chance at winning the Samsung Galaxy S II, all you have to do is:

1) Watch and share the goofy video below about Antengo’s spokesant, Antwuan, on your Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ before next Friday, the 17th. The winner will be selected at random by Antengo. Make sure to watch the whole video — the rules are at the end.

Sorry, but both of these giveaways are U.S. only. Good luck, everyone!

At CES, the AOL booth where we worked, did interviews, and ate lunch was just a few short feet from Samsung’s huge Galaxy Note booth, where they were giving out free shirts printed with your caricature, drawn, of course, on a Galaxy Note. There was a line around this thing the entire time we were there, scores of people waiting for hours for their free t-shirt.

Outside CES there were enormous banners in the most prominent and expensive ad spots on the convention center. Phone? Tablet? It’s Galaxy Note™!

And just yesterday, in a grandiose ad rather out of keeping with their well-done “next big thing” campaign, the Note was made out to be the end of all our troubles, ending the tyranny of using our fingers and letting us circle and cross out and all those things you wish you could do on your obviously-now-obsolete iPhone.

But I saw the Note at CES and formed my opinion in about five or six seconds: it’s weak. And that’s why this advertising blitz makes so much sense.

First, let me just justify my judgment. At CES, I was handed a Note at some trade event. I felt it, hefted it: weird size, not big enough to make shows and movies and games pop, not small enough to be considered compact in any way. I was handed the pen, and made a few squiggles and letters. It was, like almost all active stylus LCDs, slightly laggy, accurate up to a point, and generally unsatisfying. And I’m in favor of using a stylus. The rest of the details will be in our full review when we get one for that purpose (I won’t be writing it), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a pointless device. But that’s not what this article is about.

The thing is all this advertising. It reminded me very much of movies recently where they don’t allow advance reviews, gag people who go to screenings, and saturate the airwaves with promotional material. In the case of the movie, it’s so people will form a resolution to see the movie before the critics start beating on it. And even then, that earlier drive to see it will often overcome bad reviews. Who among us hasn’t gone to a blockbuster regardless of reviews?

Samsung is doing the same thing with the Galaxy Note. Although of course the European version has already been reviewed, consumers at large are not aware of that and likely think it’s a different product. Samsung is carpet bombing the world with Galaxy Note advertising so that people will decide they want it before they find out that it’s not, in fact, a killer product. Sure, it might be great for a few people who were looking for this kind of thing. But like the Flyer, HTC’s stylus-enabled tablet of old, it fails to deliver on its own promise. The screen and stylus aren’t new or interesting technology, nor is the OS. And as for the size, well, Dell tried it. But again, the point is not the device itself, which I obviously don’t like, it’s the launch strategy.

Sure, other companies have big launches all the time. But this is the biggest delta that I’ve seen, I think, between the effort to promote and the real confidence in the device. I think they put all this weight behind the Note because if they didn’t, the thing would sink without a trace. This way they might sell a few. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But treating the consumer electronics world like the movie world and selling on hype alone isn’t likely going to be a winning proposition. Devices can’t succeed on spectacle, and the economics are totally different.

Samsung makes a lot of great things, but the Note is not one of those things. It’s an awkward experiment that they felt could only break even on if they promoted it so relentlessly that people would have to believe it was a big-deal device. It’s a troubling trend and marks another point on the trend of CE companies competing awkwardly on either personality or spec. Few CE companies have any personality, unfortunately, and spec-sells are at best misleading and at worst a pack of lies. Samsung has no personality, and the Galaxy Note’s specs aren’t really salable. So they’re in the awkward position of selling by sheer visibility.

Do you believe in a thing called love?

If not, just listen to the rhythm of my heart… Or head on over to AT&T’s website to pre-order the Galaxy Note.

If for some reason you don’t remember, the Note is a 5.3-inch phone/tablet hybrid that showed its face in a costly Samsung commercial during last night’s Super Bowl. Its claim to fame would be a little stylus, what Samsung is calling the S-Pen, which makes the Note a tad more useful when you’re in a pinch and need to jot down a note or something quick like that.

Samsung has started out the year with 1 million Galaxy Note sales under its belt. If you feel like getting touchy-feely (touching youuuuou, touching meeeee) then you also have the option of sauntering into an AT&T come February 19 and settling the decision then and there.

The Galaxy Note will cost you $300 on-contract.

Samsung’s next flagship smartphone needs to be huge, iPhone 4 huge. It needs to be as competitive as the Galaxy S II as its set to go head-to-head with the iPhone 5. But success won’t be found as easily this time. Samsung had nearly a full year to design and release Galaxy S II after the iPhone 4′s release. The company doesn’t have that luxury this time around.

South Korean news outlet Electronic Times News just published a report that pegs the S3 as a superphone on a diet. The report states that printed circuit boards, chips and connectors allowed for an overall thickness (or thinness) of just 7mm. That’s 1.9mm thinner than the current Galaxy SII — not that several millimeters really mater. But even though the phone is thinner overall, Samsung is reportedly packing their next flagship to the gills.

Inside the svelte body is a quad-core CPU of unknown pedigree or clock speed running Android 4.0. The new model will use the same 8MP camera as the S II, which will result in a slight extrusion on the phone’s backplate. Inside is the usually assortment of an LTE radio, WiFi, GPS, and, although not specifically mentioned in this report, NFC is highly likely. No word on screen size.

But early adaptors might want to hold off. Samsung is reportedly set to launch a large line of Galaxy S3 phones in 2012.

etnews states that Samsung is preparing several S3 flavors. One model will have a better camera and one will use a stylus (like the Note!). There will even be 3D variation. The exact release schedule is not mentioned but expect a steady stream of S3 phones this year and early next.

The Samsung Galaxy S II was a massive success but it could have been better. The company announced the phone at MWC in late February 2011 but it didn’t hit markets until May/June. The company is seeking to eliminate that lag by not launching the S3 at MWC this year. The phone will instead get its own event closer to launch, and if etnews is to be believed, the phone will be released this coming May.

The scene is set. The lines are drawn. The summer of 2012 is set to play host to a massive battle: the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S III. But don’t get caught up in the nonsense war. Stand on the sideline and watch as two, likely awesome, smartphones trade shots. In the end it doesn’t really matter. The consumer wins no matter what.

It’s hard not to love the Galaxy Nexus, even if you’re not a Fandroid. With a 4.65-inch 720p display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Android 4.0 ICS to boot, what’s not to love?

Well, if you’re being picky, perhaps you’re yearning for a white GalNex, in which case I have good and bad news. Which do you want first?

The good news is that the white Galaxy Nexus is indeed an official product and it will be available on February 13, which gives you a whole day to use a combination of Google Wallet and Fab to find your sweetheart a nice Valentine’s Day gift.

The bad news is that, according to TrustedReviews, the white GalNex is only available to the UK this week. (Bad news for us, anyways.)

Wait, there’s one extra bonus bit of good news: If you have enough dough, the white GalNex is has a pentaband HSPA+ radio, meaning it will work on both AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks. And by “enough dough”, I specifically mean at least £496.79 ($770), which is what the 16GB model seems to be going for over at UK online retailer Handtec.

Past it’s pale appearance, all the specs will remain the same between the black and white models. However, if you happen to remember when we first noticed the white Galaxy Nexus, you’ll recall that the render within the post showed an all-white bezel. That isn’t the case with the official version, as the front bezel of the phone is still solid black and the back portion of the phone is white.

You can’t believe everything you read, nor can you trust everything you hear on TV. Especially if it sounds something like “four out of five people choose LG Cinema 3D over Sony and Samsung for overall 3D experience.”

Apparently the Better Business Bureau (more specifically the National Advertising Division) “has recommended that LG Electronics USA discontinue advertising claims made for the company’s Cinema 3D Television and 3D glasses.”

Back in June of 2011, LG sent out a press release claiming that four out of five customers prefer LG Cinema 3D television over Sony and Samsung in a number of different categories including brightness, color, picture quality, glasses, and overall 3D experience. The research was done by a company called Morpace Inc., who tested the TVs at their default settings without any branding shown.

Shortly thereafter, LG came out with an ad calling out Sony and Samsung directly, telling them to “stick to 2D”, which ran in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times (Online).

LG has come to market focusing primarily on passive 3D technology, whereas Sony and Samsung have opted to focus more on active 3D offerings. Passive technology allows for cheaper, lighter glasses much like the ones you’d use in a movie theater, and active 3D requires battery-powered electronic glasses to view 3D content. Still, all three companies have a number of different models across a variety of sizes. The test, on the other hand, was conducted using only entry-level models from each company.

That said, the NAD asserts that LG’s “broad line claims are premised upon a single test of the parties’ entry-level model 3D televisions” and have found the consumer-perception evidence to be materially flawed. The NAD recommends that LG discontinue claims that “four out of five” consumers prefer LG’s passive 3D over Sony and Samsung.

Samsung isn’t the first company to break into the phablet space, but those of you waiting for a (more than) worthy successor to devices like the Dell Streak 5 won’t have much longer to wait. AT&T has just announced that their pocket-busting Galaxy Note will be hitting their sales channels on February 19, complete with a $300 price tag.

Most of the device’s details — 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED display, LTE radio, and handwriting support thanks to the included S-Pen — were revealed or reiterated at this year’s CES, but now the question is whether or not people will take the plunge on a device that’s not quite a phone and not quite a tablet.

AT&T hasn’t exactly priced the Galaxy Note to move, but they’re not alone on that front. We’ve seen Verizon adopt the $300 price tag for most of their recent high-end smartphone releases, though AT&T has typically shied away from pricing their smartphones so steeply. They’re probably hoping that the novelty of a device that hovers somewhere between being phone and a tablet will be enticing enough to justify the price, but we’ll soon see how the public at large takes to Samsung’s fabulous phablet.

If you’re the type who likes getting things before everyone else (and really, who isn’t?), you may want to wake up bright and early on the February 5th. AT&T is pushing their pre-order process with the promise of a Galaxy Note in your hands a full two days before it makes its way to store shelves, and I can imagine more than few phablet fans using that 48-hour window to rub their new purchase in other people’s faces.

Wuh oh, Samsung — better watch your tail. While Apple might not be seeing any impact (be it positive or negative) on iPad sales from the launch of the Kindle Fire, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab ought to be feeling the heat.

Tapping into the data provided by their app analytics platform (which they estimate has found its way onto around 90% of the Android devices out there), Flurry highlights a few surprising numbers.

Downloads:

Next up, Flurry looked at the download numbers for 5 applications that were in the Top 10 on both the Android Market and Amazon’s App Store. To boil it all down: for every sale of one of these top apps to a Galaxy Tab owner, there were 2.53 sales to a Kindle Fire owner. Again, consider how much bigger the Galaxy Tab audience is (Flurry estimates that it’s at least double) — and yet, the Kindle Fire owners are buying more.

If you’re an Android developer wondering whether or not you should target the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s App Store, the answer seems to be an incredibly clear “Yes.”

We took a break from the Android round-up in December because, well, to be honest I was on vacation. But January gave us a few extra smartphones and the holidays are over, so we’re back. What we’ve got for you today leans into more expensive turf, and unfortunately, our favorite Android devices for the past two months are also exclusively at Verizon, so Big Red subscribers should pay attention.

Without further ado, these are our favorite December/January releases of the Android persuasion: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the LG Spectrum, and the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx.

Enjoy!

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Features:

• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
• Verizon 4G LTE support
• 4.65-inch 1280×720 Super AMOLED display
• 5MP rear camera (1080 video capture), 1.3MP front-facing camera (720p video capture)
• 1.2GHz dual-core processor
• MSRP: $299.99 with a two-year contract

Pros:

• Ice Cream Sandwich is a solid step up from Gingerbread
• That 720p display is huge and beautiful
• Google Hangouts

Cons:

• The phone might be a bit too big for one-handed actions
• Feels a bit plastic-y
• No pre-loaded Google wallet, but you can download it

If you’re looking for Android, the Galaxy Nexus is where you’ll find it. Ice Cream Sandwich is a joy compared to Gingerbread, and this coming from someone who is quite hard on Android. Of course, the screen on this bad boy is amazing, but as MG points out in his review, sometimes the phone is just too big to perform one-handed actions.

We also expected image quality to be better out of that 5-megapixel rear camera, but it simply can’t compete with the iPhone’s 8-megapixel shooter. (And no, I’m not saying that based on megapixels… Image quality is simply better with the 4S.) But that doesn’t really matter — an Android fan is an Android fan, and this is as good as Android gets.

LG Spectrum

Features:

• Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread
• Verizon 4G LTE support
• 4.5-inch True HD 1280×720 Display
• 8MP rear camera (1080p video capture), 1.3MP front-facing camera
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor
• MSRP: $199.99 with a two-year contract

Pros:

• Beautiful display
• Pre-loaded ESPN Sports Center app in HD
• LG Y is actually a nice custom overlay

Cons:

• Not a fan of that brushed plastic back panel
• The silver bezels don’t handle prints well

I was hard on this phone when I first played around with it, and I still maintain that there’s nothing super special about the Spectrum. It’s not like the Rezound with Beats Audio imtegration or the Razr with its anorexic waist line. That said, you really won’t find these kind of specs on an Android phone for just $200. In fact, I’d be so bold as to call it a steal.

I’m also pretty excited about that display. I have yet to put a Super AMOLED Plus up against this 720p True HD display, but I’d say it’s one of the most (if not, the most) stunning displays I saw at CES. Certainly worth consideration, especially if you are a fan of LG phones to begin with.

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx

Features:

• Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread
• Verizon 4G LTE support
• 4.3-inch Super AMOLED advanced 960×540 display
• 8MP rear camera (1080p video capture), 1.3MP front-facing camera (720p video capture)
• 1.2GHz dual-core processor
• MSRP: $299.99 with a two-year contract

Pros:

• 3300 mAH battery is a big improvement from the Razr
• Less of a “Moto bump” along the back
• Bump in storage from 16GB to 32GB

Cons:

• 1.89mm thicker than its predecessor
• UI can slow things down a tad

The Droid Razr Maxx is a very special phone. It kills the few things that were wrong with the original Razr — which is an excellent device, mind you — and then doubles the storage, to boot. I was originally bothered with how light the Razr was. It made premium materials feel cheap, but the extra heft and weight on the Razr Maxx really gives this phone a pricey, solid feel.

A Droid Razr update for Android 4.0 leaked out this week, so if you’re comfortable with tinkering than that’s an extra benefit to the Maxx. We’ll have a full review on this phone up very shortly, but from the short time I’ve spent with it thus far I’d say it has the superior hardware in this particular bunch of Android handsets.

It’ll all come down to what matters most to you. If that giant 720p screen excites you, go Galaxy Nexus all the way. The Spectrum, on the other hand, offers up some pretty killer specs at a much more reasonable price, while the Droid Razr Maxx wins in the hardware/design department.

According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung’s 23.5% share.

In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped during the same time.

However, notes Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, “while Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20% global share during 2011.” Apple’s annual share, meanwhile, was 19%.

In other words, Apple won the quarter, not the year.

Smartphone global shipments reached nearly half a billion units in 2011 (488.5 million units), the firm found, turning the smartphone battle into a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung in terms of units shipped.

Nokia, the one-time smartphone leader, is still holding onto a top spot, in position #3, with 19.6 million units shipped during Q4 and 77.3 million shipped during 2011. But Nokia’s global share has been halved from 33% in 2010 to just 16% in 2011, indicating its ongoing decline.

Although Strategy’s numbers paint the Samsung vs. Apple battle as a tight race between mobile giants, there’s a big difference between the numbers being reported here. As MacRumors points out, Samsung no longer reports its mobile phone sales numbers, while Apple discloses its units sold each quarter. That means analysts are estimating Samsung’s numbers, but Apple’s numbers are provided by the company itself. It could be that Apple’s lead is even greater than what’s seen here.

Update: A report from the analysts at Canalys has just come in, and confirms the same thing – it’s an Apple vs. Samsung battle.

According to the firm’s latest findings, Apple’s record shipment of 37 million iPhones shipped in Q4 beat the previous record held by Nokia of 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. Another shocking figure: the huge volume of iPhones shipped exceeded the size of the entire market of 4 years ago, when 35.5 million smartphones shipped globally.

The firm also noted Nokia’s shipment of 19.6 million smartphones, calling it “a decent performance given its current transitional state.” However, Canalys stopped short of estimating Samsung’s phone shipments at this time, saying that the company doesn’t disclose these numbers publicly. They did say that Samsung’s quarterly smartphone growth was around 30% and mobile phone shipments were up 10%, though.

Says Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst Chris Jones, “the numbers are still coming in, but our early take on the state of the smartphone market is that, while Apple and Samsung clearly saw phenomenal performances, many other vendors have struggled. The full impact of this difficult quarter on hardware and software vendors will become clearer over the next week, when final results from the likes HTC, LG, Huawei and ZTE are announced, and Canalys publishes its full Q4 2011 worldwide country-level databases.”

Every once in a while something comes along that’s worth a wait, and I think the Samsung Galaxy S III will be one of those things. We’ve all been expecting Samsung’s next flagship to show its face at MWC in February, but according to the Verge, Samsung may have other plans.

Anonymous sources who spoke with the Verge claim that the SGSIII will still be available “before summer,” but that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may not be the most beneficial launch venue. Last year, the Samsung Galaxy S II was debuted at MWC and though it was available in Europe almost immediately, the U.S. had to wait quite a while before AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were all comfortable with their model.

That said, the Galaxy S II still has a little life in it yet, and it would be just plain silly for Samsung to interrupt its success too early. A look at the numbers, if you don’t mind:

• In less than a month, Samsung sold 1 million Galaxy S IIs in its home country of South Korea
• Samsung sold 3 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S II in its first 55 days on the market
• After 85 days on the market, units sold jumped to the 5 million mark
• By September, the company shipped over 10 million units
• At this point, 1 in every 10 South Koreans is carrying a Galaxy S II

Meanwhile, the original Galaxy S is still selling well, topping 20 million units sold.

No doubt the Galaxy S III will be a beast, and Samsung is well aware of its mobile prowess by this point. A bevy of new phones — most of which are meant for the European market — will launch at MWC. Still, after the success of earlier generation Galaxy S models, Samsung knows its consumers will wait a tad longer to hear about the SIII as long as it shows up on shelves shortly thereafter.

From the report this morning, we believe that will be the case.

I just love it when leaks come straight from the horse’s mouth. A leaky horse mouth, if you will.

Electronista is reporting that a Samsung product marketing manager by the name of Ryan Bidan has let slip a few details on the next Galaxy Tab or, potentially, the next iteration of the Galaxy Note.

According to the report, Mr. Bidan hinted at the inclusion of an S pen (the same stylus used with the Note), 3D gestures courtesy of the front-facing camera, and perhaps even some voice controls “in certain circumstances.”

Here’s the official quote:

I think a pen interface continues to make a lot of sense across a number of screen sizes, like the larger is more obvious of those. That’s about as specific as I can be without announcing a product.

Samsung has been aggressive with its move into the tablet arena, offering a number of different-sized products with most of the same feature sets. In fact, if we include the Galaxy Note phablet, screen sizes range from 5.3-inches to 10.1-inches. The probability of a larger Galaxy Note, however, is pretty minimal since anything even slightly bigger would have a tough time fitting into a pockets — which is necessary if we’re to call it a smartphone.

That said, the S pen (along with the other reported new features) will likely be integrated onto a new Galaxy Tab, but which size has yet to be determined. Samsung has already released three 10-inch GalTab models, and two 7-inchers. So if I had to guess, I’d say you’ll likely find these new features on a 10-inch model before you see them anywhere else. If it goes well, perhaps Samsung will integrate the S pen elsewhere.

But we mustn’t forget that most tablets sold with a stylus haven’t done so well… yet. Then again, that isn’t really the fault of the stylus so much as it is other factors.

Remember, the stylus does have its perks, and if it doesn’t add much cost for Samsung, why not add the feature?

It’s not really news to say that the Galaxy S II is a hit, but it has actually become a mega hit in South Korea. According to maker Samsung, the Android handset has been sold a whopping 5 million times in its domestic market since release at the end of April 2011. In other words, a little more than 10% of the country’s entire population (48 million people) are now proud owners of the phone.

It’s the first cell phone that has reached this milestone in mobile-crazy South Korea, according to Japanese business daily The Nikkei. The paper also says that one out of four South Korean smartphones users owns a Galaxy S II (sounds like feature phones don’t play a big role in that country anymore).

In 2011, Samsung commanded a 53% market share in South Korea’s smartphone industry.

The company recently decided not to take legal action against its fiercest competitor, Apple, in its home market – despite being in a patent war with the iPhone maker the whole world over. It looks like Samsung can afford it.

Via Sammy Hub

The Surface has been around since 2007, but the new and improved SUR40 is a much more usable device. Microsoft and Samsung were showing off the new touch-capable table in NYC today, and I was lucky enough to get up close and personal with it.

The specs in and of themselves are impressive: 40-inch 50-point multitouch screen with a 1080×1920 resolution, AMD processors, 1GB of memory dedicated entirely to graphics, a 4-inch profile, and a host of USB/HDMI ports. It’s the computer you always wanted, save for the fact that it looks like a kitchen table and costs about $9,000.

But chances are this won’t end up in your living room. Instead, it’ll show up in your favorite retail store, at a hotel, or at the mall. That’s because this device has been specially engineered for that environment, and the needs presented within it.

That is where PixelSense comes into play. It’s an engineering technique that basically replaces the original five cameras on the Surface with hundreds and possibly thousands of tiny sensors embedded straight into the LCD panel. That means it’s no longer the conductivity of your finger directing the screen, but the screen reading your movements.

In fact, the screen sees you even as your hand hovers over the table; Microsoft has simply told it not to recognize that.

Another cool feature of this PixelSense-equipped screen is that it can detect the orientation of your finger. That means that if I want to drag an image of some shoes I’m interested in over to my corner of the Surface, the screen immediately recognizes the direction of my finger (and thus, which direction I happen to be facing) and can realign the image to face me.

But that’s just a tiny piece of what makes this thing awesome. Since the screen reads everything (and not just conductive energy), it can also handle real world objects. Oh, and it can tell which way they’re facing thanks to a small optical tag located on the bottom of the object.

Before I delve into it, just think about the retail implementations of this. Here’s one I didn’t see in action but thought would be cool:

You walk into a Foot Locker and see a pair of Nikes that are calling out to you. The only problem is that they only have them in all white and you know you’ll scuff them up. You’d prefer something a bit louder. Perhaps a royal blue?

Plop the shoe down on the Surface where a unique optical tag on the sole of the shoe can be read. Instantly you’re in Nike ID, customizing that same pair of shoes into what you want them to be.

As it does with just about any product, the Surface will generate a Microsoft tag for your shoes that can be read by your smartphone, which can then take you to a purchasing site or be saved for girlfriend’s input.

The new SUR40 is made with Gorilla Glass and is also spill resistant, using drains around the bezel to keep any spilled liquids out of the internals. Again, perfect for retail. What’s interesting is even a few drops of water are read by the Surface thanks to PixelSense.

In short, it’s all about interacting in a new way with the brands you enjoy. I saw a few different implementations of it and found myself wishing that all shopping was done this way.

For example, FujiFilm has a deal in place in Australia (but was too shy to name the retailer just yet) where the Surface can be used to make picture books. Just plug in your USB, SD card, or the like, and your pictures are then uploaded to the device (no worries, they’re never saved to the hard drive). From there, you can drag, drop, customize, add text, and finally print out a receipt to be taken to the front counter.

Absolut Vodka also has a Surface-friendly app, though no one was that clear on whether or not it’ll be live in any venues anytime soon. Still, the app lets you be the DJ, and offers different mixed drinks based on the music you’re playing. Again, you can whip out your phone to read the tag matching this or that drink and save the recipe straight to your phone.

Kia has an app that works in a very similar way to my imagined Foot Locker/Nike app, which will let you customize the vehicle (paint job, interior colors, rims, entertainment system, etc.) while you’re in a dealership.

If high-end makeup is your thing, you’ll also be excited to learn that Neiman Marcus’ luxury beauty brand Le Métier de Beauté is using the SUR40 as a consultation table in the coming months. You can customize shades of certain eye shadow or blushes which appear on-screen as soon as the actual product is placed on the table, save the “recipe” of your end-result to your phone, along with a picture of yourself post-makeover. That way you can go back home, apply the makeup yourself, and still look like you walked out of the salon.

Two of my favorites mostly concern information, and the transference of information.

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), for example, created an app that lets you work out your finances, savings, and any other special offers from the bank right on the Surface. That way you aren’t relying on the employee to give you information that is in your best interest, but can actually see the effects of whatever change you might be making to your account right in front of you. Full transparency is something the banking industry could use a hearty helping of, and also something that would probably lead more bank users to participate in programs and special offers.

Microsoft also showed me an app that will map out the inside of an airport and show you various retailers and food vendors in your terminal. The app not only shows special deals and offers from said vendors, but gives you the time it takes to walk there so you don’t miss your flight.

Of course, the possibilities are endless. If you have a loyalty or member card at a certain retailer, you can use that on the Surface to bring up your information and see if you have any rewards points to go towards a purchase, or take a look at which products are on sale. Companies can also choose to use the SUR40 for product comparisons, removing the employees and all of their “sell-more” mentalities from the purchasing decision.

Performance-wise I didn’t see any hiccups or issues at all, and I’d honestly love to have one of these in my living room as a coffee table. Sadly, I’m about $8,400 short. (The SUR40 costs $8,400.) Luckily, it’s available and shipping now so if you’ve got the dough it can be yours for the buying. If not, it’ll still be a lovely new technology to have in stores, train stations, and the like, and I can’t wait to see this thing roll out big time.

I’ve long wondered what exactly Samsung would do with their homegrown Bada operating system, and for a little while there the answer seemed clear — Samsung SVP Tae-jin Kang recently noted that Bada would be merged with the Intel-backed Tizen OS project.

In fact, he said at CES that the work to combine both platforms had already begun, which seemed like a pretty definitive conclusion for Bada.

Now it seems like Samsung may be having second thoughts about the whole process. Samsung representatives have reached out to AllThingsD and Information Week to say that a final decision regarding a merger hasn’t yet been made.

“Samsung and other members of Tizen Association have not made a firm decision regarding the merge of Bada and Tizen,” Samsung said in a statement. “We are carefully looking at it as an option to make the platforms serve better for customers.”

It goes on to say that Bada still has an important part to play in Samsung’s mobile ecosystem and that it would continue “democratizing the smartphone experience in all markets.” Samsung seems to have chosen their words very wisely here, and seems to confirm rumors that Bada would continue to power low-end smartphones while Tizen would grace some more premium fare.

Samsung has spent some time on the fence when it comes to their Bada-based efforts. The company was reportedly considering making it open-source back in September, with the possibility of expanding its use into their line of Smart TVs. The nascent Tizen platform is similarly meant for expansion into different device categories, with “tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, [and] smart TVs” being prime among them. Sounds like a perfect fit, should the two parties ever make things official.

Of course, there are considerable gains to be made in the mobile market too. Despite playing second-fiddle to Samsung’s mobile OS of choice, Bada isn’t exactly a slouch — for a time Bada appeared on more smartphones sold than Windows Phone. While it poses little chance of making a considerable dent in a smartphone market that’s already dominated by a handful of players, Bada was being looked at as a way for Samsung to reduce their reliance on Google’s own mobile OS.

There are a number of reasons why Samsung would want to keep an ace in the hole, not least of which is the fact that Samsung pays out royalties to Microsoft for the Android devices they produce. And of course Samsung making Windows Phones too, so royalties are paid out for nearly every handset Samsung makes save for those running Bada. With a Bada-Tizen union, Samsung and other hardware vendors may have a more viable competitor in the smartphone OS space, but for now we’ll have to see if the merger ever comes to fruition.

If you’re wondering why we didn’t stop by to test out the Samsung SUR40 touch-table, AKA the Surface 2.0, during CES, there’s a good reason: we did that last year. The device, while impressive, isn’t exactly new. But as it has little in the way of competition — the Surface is the nonpareil of touch tables — they probably didn’t feel they needed to get it out in any kind of hurry.

The device, which costs $8400 and ships this month, must be quite a bit more attractive than the original to companies eager to spruce up their public spaces. The old Surface was kind of a chunk, and the limited resolution was no help, either. Oh, and the price. The new Surface beats it handily in every respect. It’s flatter, lighter, wall-mountable, and 1080p.

As we learned last year, the SUR40 also has what they call PixelSense, tiny sensors built in between the pixels of the image that can detect light. It’s through these, not capacitive or resistive sensors, that your touches are detected. This also means it can read things like QR codes, whole-hand gestures, and text.

Here’s our hands-on from last CES:

One problem I see is that companies aren’t always willing to do what it takes to make a Surface effective. When we were at CES, we passed countless touchscreens and displays showing menus, promotions, local info, and so on. They were all pretty terrible: no multitouch, buggy and unresponsive UIs, and kind of useless info. But doubtless they cost only a fraction of what a Surface cost. Are restaurants and hotels going to be satisfied with this level of quality? Many, I fear, will be. To truly take advantage of what the Surface 2.0 has to offer, it will take thousands of dollars in development and training. Imagine checking in to your hotel via Surface, or ordering food on it. Great! But not easy.

Fortunately the development community for Surface has been around for a long time and is serious about what they do. I got a chance to hang out with a few developers, and it seemed to me that the capabilities of the thing are huge, but only for those dedicated to it.

At all events, the device should ship soon, and it might be just the thing to make your lobby or waiting area more interesting. You can pre-order or find out more at Samsung’s Surface page.

For most of the ten years I’ve been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in. Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone will connect to the fridge which, in turn, will connect to the TV. And year after year, they failed.

Until now.

Samsung, and to some extent the other vendors, have finally cracked it. For most of the past few years they’ve watched as Apple ran circles around them in terms of media sharing and remote control. Obviously Apple’s systems have been limited to iPod/iTunes/iPad/Mac but Samsung, a major player in both the white goods and the mobile markets, can now have it all.

First, some numbers.

Samsung is number one in TVs for the sixth year in a row, selling approximately two TVs a second in November. While a minority of those TVs have been what Samsung is calling Smart TVs, all new TVs in 2012 will include boxless interactive television, which means a few things. First, it means Google and Apple are in trouble. Two TVs per second definitely beats any performance metrics for Google’s platform and, more important, Samsung has headed off Apple at the living room media pass.

Then consider Samsung’s lead in cellphone sales. While many would argue that Samsung specializes in meh and me-too, 60 million cellphones sold in 2011 can’t be a fluke. This isn’t about Android or iOS or Windows Phone – it’s about Samsung making and selling millions of phones to millions of people. Samsung is mercenary. They’re happy to use anyone’s OS as long as it puts phones into boxes and boxes into shopping bags.

So you have two superlatives: biggest phone manufacturer and biggest TV manufacturer. Add in some tablets, some washing machines, and some acceptable software and you have a real and vibrant ecosystem. The next year will bring plenty of efforts to bring streaming media into the home, but the guy who is already there will win.

Before the iPod, there were plenty of small players in the MP3 player market but no one manufacturer had any real numbers. The market was perceived as too small. Now we have next-gen TVs. As people begin to understand the value of the Samsung Smart TV in its fourth generation and, in honesty, most of the early smart TV efforts by all major players were pretty bad, they’ll be happy to plop down a few hundred for a TV that can evolve every year with the addition of an upgrade package that ups the processing power and adds features.

These new TVs are, obviously, “consumer electronics” devices so they’re rarely upgraded and rarely considered obsolete. Like bankruptcy, you shop for a TV gradually then suddenly. You live with the same TV until the kids start wanting to watch Tangled in HD or you see Grey’s Anatomy: The Musical in living 3D at a friend’s house. That’s why Apple has never made a TV: There’s no way to sell a new one every year.

Samsung’s success isn’t a sure thing. Incumbents rarely survive the revolutionary tidal wave of Apple’s design team and if history is any guide when/if the “real” Apple TV appears all of Samsung’s hard work will be forgotten as accolades roll in for Apple’s amazing (and I’m just guessing) retina display screen, built-in coffee-maker, and Scent-Surround smell emitters. However, if your Samsung phone and tablet can talk to your Samsung Smart TV and your Samsung aquarium pump, you may be inclined to stay in a single family when it comes to CE choices.

Apple could do this as will, and they are trying. But it will be difficult at best and “just a hobby” at worst. Samsung makes TVs. They make everything – the screen, the PCBs, and the case. Apple will be outsourcing their manufacture and they won’t be able to compete on price, especially when they’re buying panels from Samsung.

Can Apple beat other CE manufacturers at this game? Sure. They’ve done similar things before. But Samsung and Sony and LG have plenty of time to sell TVs and at two a second, Apple will have quite a bit of catching up to do.

Here at the CES 2012 International conference, we promised you’d be seeing ultrabooks galore. Well, Samsung isn’t going to let you down, today announcing the Samsung Series 9 ultrabook. The Series 9 sports a 15-inch display on a compact 14-inch body.

This is the second generation of Samsung’s Series 9 notebooks, and the company calls it as thin as some of the original tablets we saw hit the market a couple years back. Yep, even when it’s closed.

The Series 9 weights 2.5lbs, and measures in at just half an inch thick. In fact, it’s 30 percent smaller than the first-gen model. It took 30,000 hours to design, and features all the same requirements we’re seeing out of ultrabooks.

As far as InstantOn goes, this thing boots up in 9.8 seconds, wakes in just 1.4, and should last up to 10 hours.