Samsung, HP, Ford, Xi3 Show Off Holiday Products

by Nicholas Kolakowski

The 2012 Ford Focus features voice control, in addition to an 8-inch touch-screen for controlling in-vehicle systems such as navigation and climate control.

Ford worked to replace many of the vehicles traditional buttons with LCD screens and, mounted on the steering wheel, the same sort of five-way buttons found on MP3 players and television remote controls. Call it the iPod-ification of Detroit.

This all-in-one printer from Hewlett-Packard features a detachable touch-screen for Web browsing, e-mail and—oh, yeah—printing documents without a PC.

The HP Photosmart eStations tablet runs Android 2.1; the company promises an upgrade around the holidays. The product retails for $399.

Samsung hopes its 7-inch Galaxy Tab will appeal to consumers who would otherwise gravitate toward the Apple iPad for their tablet PC needs.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab features dual cameras for videoconferencing, a variety of apps through Android Marketplace, Android 2.2 and a 1GHz processor.

Samsung is also marketing the Galaxy S, a series of Android-based smartphones that the company hopes will challenge both the Apple iPhone and other high-end Android smartphones from rival manufacturers.

The Cricket Crosswave is a dual-mode CDMA EvDO/WiFi device that creates a mobile hot spot.

This product is a portable pico projector audio dock—with a 30-pin connector for an iPhone, iPod or iPad—which can project up to a 60-inch image on a nearby flat surface.

The Energizer Inductive Charger uses Qi—a charging standard developed by the Wireless Power Consortium—to power devices without wires. For the moment, devices need a “Qi sleeve” in order to charge (Energizer offers a Qi sleeve for the iPhone and a “Qi door” for the BlackBerry curve), but apparently Qi will be integrated into future devices.

The Xi3 Modular Computer integrates three boards—one board for processors and RAM and two I/O boards for connectivity and input/output—into a 1.4-pound PC “cube.”??í

Basic specs for the Xi3 Modular Computer (5 Series model) include an AMD 1.8GHz, 64-bit Athlon dual-core processor; 2GB of DDR2 memory; two internal Xi3 I/O cards; and an external Xi3 Xm3dia port.