Samsung and Visa have announced their plans to bring the latest innovation in payment technology, near field communication (NFC), to the market as part of their sponsorships of 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

 

Consumers will be able to make mobile payments using their Samsung Olympic and Paralympic Games smartphone (although the compatible models were not specified). They’ll do this by selecting the Visa mobile contactless application, choosing the pay option within the app and holding the mobile phone in front of a contactless reader at the point of purchase.

 

In London there are already over 60000 locations where contactless payments are accepted and contactless and electronic card payments will be available in the run-up to and during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Samsung and Visa also plan to make the handset available for consumers to purchase via mobile network operators and other distributors. A Visa-enabled SIM card will be required for use with the device in order to make purchases at retailers who have the contactless payment system.

 

 

Boy Genius Reporting (BGR) has gotten hold of what looks to be the next BlackBerry Storm, although the tech site states that it might be dubbed the BlackBerry Touch when it is officially launched. According to BGR this full touch-screen smartphone is thinner and faster than previous touch-screen phones such as the BlackBerry Torch 9800 from Research In Motion (RIM) and it will be operating on BlackBerry OS 6.1. A forthcoming new feature for this OS, which its says looks very similar to OS 6 which powers devices like the BlackBerry Bold 9780, will be the BlackBerry ID. This is apparently substituting the current PIN and may be employed to gain access to RIM’s cloud services. This new device will reportedly be made official in May along with the BlackBerry Bold Touch, BlackBerry Curve Touch, BlackBerry Torch 2.

 

 

 

 

HTC unveiled its first tablet PC during this year’s Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain in February. The Taiwanese manufacturer’s iPad competitor is powered by a 1.5 GHz single-core processor. It boasts a 7" (1024 x 600) touch-screen, a five megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 1 GB of RAM and 16- or 32 GB of internal storage. 

 

The HTC Flyer also features a redesigned HTC Sense user interface (UI) and the company’s new HTC Scribe Technology, which enables the device to be employed with a capacitive pen for taking notes, drawing, or event writing on a webpage or photo. Unlike the latest Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 and the Motorola Xoom, the Flyer isn’t operating on Android 3.0 (aka Honeycomb), instead running on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). What really sets it apart from other tablets the Scribe Technology, which you can now see in action via the company’s first released video of this device (posted below).