Samsung packs more glasses with 3DTVs

Samsung hopes to lure more consumers to 3DTV technology by packing two pairs of 3D glasses with each of its 3D-capable sets.

The entertainment industry is still trying to drive home to consumers that the future of everything is 3D, but so far buyers have shown some reluctance to open their wallets for 3D-capable HDTVs, then have to open them again to buy extra pairs of 3D glasses in the not-unlikely event more than one person in their household might want to watch TV at the same time. Samsung is trying to take a little bit of the sting out of the 3D glasses situation: beginning April 24, the company will be bundling two pairs of its 3D active glasses with its entire lineup of 3DTVs at no extra charge. The classes normally run about $50 per pair: Samsung is touting the promotion as a value, noting that buyers can now outfit a family of four for 3D content for under $100—well, besides the cost of the 3DTV.

“We are excited to make it even more affordable for the entire family to enjoy Samsung’s lifelike 3D experience,” said Samsung Electronics America’s senior VP of home entertainment John Revie, in a statement. “Reaching new audiences with the wonder of Samsung’s Full HD 3D is key to driving continued adoption of 3D in the home.”

Of course, there’s a bit of an exception to the promotion: customer buying Samsung’s D7000 or higher 3D LED TVs or the Samsung D6500 or above plasma 3D TVs won’t get an extra pair of 3D glasses: instead, they’ll continue to get Samsung’s 3D Starter Kit, which already came with two pairs of glasses, along with promo versions ofShrek and a voucher forMegamind 3D, both on Blu-ray.

Samsung also says it will be “price adjusting” its complete line of 3D glasses soon.

Samsung teams with John Legend, donates $1 million worth of tech to schools

Earlier today, Samsung was joined by John Legend to announce the winners of a $1 million contest that will provide needed technology to a number of schools across the country. Our event coverage, pictures, and a bit of video are below.

At the Time Warner building in Manhattan this morning, Samsung announced the winner of its Samsung “Solve for Tomorrow” contest, which is giving away more than $1 million in technology prizes to promote science and math. Finalists converged from schools all around the country for the announcement, even students from a remote village in Alaska. R&B star John Legend was on hand to host the event, which was important enough that Samsung’s CEO showed up for a few pictures.

The contest

Last fall, students and teachers across the country were asked how they are creatively using Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) outside the classroom to better the environment, with a promised grand prize of $155,000 in technology (seen above) to the school with the best uses. A few months ago, Samsung gave the 50 semi-finalists video cameras to record what they were doing. Today, the top five finalists’ videos were shown and the winner was chosen. (Watch all of the videos here.)

• Kokhanok School in Kokhanok, Alaska is a fly-in village of 300 people and used trees infected with Bark Beetles (an epidemic there) to power their homes.


• Patchogue Medford High School in Medford, New York studied water in their community to see if the town’s new water plant reduced the alarming number of nitrates and phosphates in the water that was killing the local shellfish.


• South Shore Charter Public School in Norwell, Massachusetts made a “veggie van” that runs on vegetable oil to help reduce their own emissions.


• Wheeling High School in Wheeling, Illinois pretty much proved that global warming is real by calculating the emissions of cars in their town. John Legend was impressed by these guys.


• Winner:  West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon realized that hydro-electric energy from the dams is killing the local salmon, so they studied wind- and solar-powered alternatives. The students actually built their own wind turbines and mini solar cars.

West Salem High School took home the grand prize of $155,000 in technology products from Samsung, Microsoft, DirecTV, and the Adobe Foundation. There were no real losers though; all finalists took home a clean $80,000 in technology products as well. The winner was chosen partially by online voting (40 percent), but mostly by Samsung.

Solve for Tomorrow is part of Samsung’s Hope for Children campaign, which has raised more than $10 million in technology and other prizes for more than 300 hundreds schools in the past seven years.

John Legend: Good at looking good

The star of the event, of course, was John Legend. We were unable to catch an interview with him, but did capture a few pictures of the man of the hour, who was here to co-promote his “Show Me Campaign,” which is attempting to use education and technology to break the cycle of poverty. Legend recently wrote a song for the documentary Waiting for Superman - -the film that prompted Mark Zuckerberg to donate $100 million of his money to help schools try out an innovative new curriculum.

However, more interesting than his appearance, was how impossible it was to take a bad picture of John Legend. My poor photography skills caught almost everyone at their worst, but Legend evaded my incompetence without even knowing it. Check it out.

Stray shots

Here are a few more shots of the event, which was held at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center in NYC. The Experience is not a store, but has demos of most major Samsung products available for use by anyone.

The facility was nice, though none of the company’s upcoming tablets or phones were on display. However, the new thin-bezel LED TVs were quite impressive.

Samsung’s CEO stopped by to say hello as well.

Good ideas, good prizes

As events like this usually are, the main goal here was to make Samsung look good. However, the company did take a lot more time than it had to letting the students and teachers speak. It was great to see how excited children from Alaska were to play with all of the gadgets and say hello to John Legend. I wish I had gotten that kind of opportunity when I was younger. All in all, everyone here seemed deserving of the many new projectors, laptops, computer monitors, and printers they will receive. Hope for Children may benefit Samsung’s image, but today it benefited the children more.

Samsung has no plans to compete with LG’s Optimus 3D for now

A Samsung Mobile UK exec says that there is no consumer need for a 3D mobile phone and no plans right now for the company to bring one to market in an indirect dig on LG's Optimus 3D.

On the heels of LG’s Mobile World Congress reveal of its upcoming glasses-free Optimus 3D phone is word from leading 3D TV manufacturer Samsung that there are currently no plans to bring a competing product to the market. The wording is actually a little more pointed than that, however.

Samsung Mobile UK head of product management Jim Powell said “We are world leaders in 3D, but we haven’t seen a need for 3D on mobiles as yet for UK customers,” TechRadar reports. In a market where smaller is proving to be a consumer preference, adding a luxury feature like a 3D display doesn’t add up. “There’s a trade off with when it comes to thickness and pocketablity when it comes adding 3D into a mobile phone as well.”

While Powell doesn’t specifically name LG’s Optimus 3D in his comments, as the only mobile product that offers the feature there really isn’t a lot of room for interpretation. Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS handheld gaming device will also offer a portable, glasses-free 3D experience, but one thing it doesn’t have is mobile capabilities.

Despite his indirect indictment, Powell said that the company remains open to following market trends. “We just don’t see [3D] is needed yet – good luck to the innovators though, it will be interesting to see if it works, and if it does you’ll see a response from Samsung quickly.”

Samsung Vibrant 4G for T-Mobile gets FCC clearance?

A new Sammy christened SGH-T959V just passed through the FCC, and we’ve got a good feeling this is the Vibrant 4G that we know is on its way to Big Magenta before too long. Why’s that? Well, most notably, SGH-T959 is the model number for the original Vibrant — and like the Vibrant, this device has support for AWS, which any T-Mobile 3G / 4G device would need. Furthermore, take one look at that outline up there — certainly looks like a Galaxy S of some sort, doesn’t it? More on this soon, we suspect.

Is a deadlock between Samsung and carriers stagnating Android updates?

It's the stuff of playground arguments: An anonymous insider claims the manufacturer and its carriers won't back down, and it's why you don't have Android 2.2.

Things continue to look bleak for Samsung Android customers. Last week, a T-Mobile insider accused the manufacturer of purposefully putting off the Android 2.2 update until the Vibrant Plus is introduced. And despite protests from Samsung, it’s difficult to dismiss the fact that only one of its Android phones was privileged enough for the latest Froyo OS.

Now we’re hearing that a standoff between Samsung and its carriers could be what’s between users and an updated Android OS. An anonymous source wrote into XDA Developers, claiming that Samsung requires carriers to pay a fee each time its smartphones are eligible for an Android upgrade, and carriers have simply refused.

It almost seems like enough of a headache to switch to an iOS device. Apple simply requires its users to plug in their phones and open iTunes; Android devices rely on carriers for its OS upgrades. These overhaul “feature” upgrades aren’t cheap, and thus Samsung passes the buck to its carriers – and they apparently aren’t having it. “Most US Carriers aren’t very happy with Samsung’s decision to charge for Android updates as feature updates…As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, all US carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop their fees and give the update to the carriers.”

Before shooting off any livid letters to Samsung, though, it’s important to note that this latest news first originated from a forum posting. So while it does seem to line up with what the T-Mobile insider claimed last week (and the fact that the source is allegedly an insider and in breach of an NDA), we’re going to take it with a grain of salt. Still, there has to be some reason that Samsung has done such a poor job upgrading its users’ Android devices.

And maybe the anonymous statement will serve a purpose other than enlightening users to the situation. According to a Facebook post from US Cellular, the Galaxy S will be ready for its Froyo update in March (the post mentions the Mesmerize, which is US Cellular’s Galaxy S phone).