Sony Ericsson has announced W395 Walkman phone, with large powerful built-in stereo speakers. Targeted at youth, the slick slider W395 offers special stereo speakers and also HPM-64 stereo headset with stereo widening for a great sound experience.

The Sony Ericsson W395 phone includes features like 2 megapixel camera, FM radio, 2.0” crystal clear display and motion gaming support. It also offers great music features like TrackID to find the tracks you love easily, while PlayNow allows users to download a full range of mobile content.

Billed by Sony Ericsson as their “most affordable Walkman slider phone to date”, it ships with 1GB memory card and offers dedicated control keys for managing the music. “Sony Ericsson takes pride in understanding the youth market, and the W395 is a mobile phone that caters to all their needs with great music quality.” said Alexandre Cardon, Global product marketing manager (music) at Sony Ericsson.

While the pricing details of the phone are not yet known, it is expected to be available from Q1 in the colours Dusky Grey and Blush Titanium.

LG has announced LG Arena KM900 multimedia phone with innovative 3D S-Class User Interface. The dynamic interface offers cube-based layout providing four customizable home screens for direct access to all features.

“The direct, intuitive and dynamic S-Class UI will be unlike anything that has appeared on a mobile phone before. With rich 3D graphics, touch sensitivity and exciting multimedia capabilities, it will truly make ARENA a fully loaded multimedia phone,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

LG says the phone will deliver ‘an exhilarating multimedia experience’, with features aided by Dolby and DivX technologies. It will also offer internet connectivity with HSDPA 7.2 networks, Wi-Fi, A-GPS.

LG will announce more details about Arena KM900 and its features at the Mobile World Congress.

Samsung has unveiled S8300 UltraTouch, its latest full-touch slider phone. The ultra-slim 12.7mm phone presents 2.8” AMOLED anti-scratch, anti-smudge full touch screen offering bright and vivid colours.

The improved TouchWiz user interface lets user flick through photos and navigating through maps easily and intuitively. Users can also drag widgets and place them on the screen for one-click access. The slide-out tactile 3x4 keypad offers quicker phone dialing.

The S8300 comes loaded with 8 megapixel camera with dual power LED flash, smile detection and 30fps VGA video recording. It also includes GPS for navigation and geo-tagging of photos.

Samsung has not announced a launch date or price for the phone.You can find a preview over at GSM Arena.

Iomega has introduced StorCenter Pro ix4-100 network attached storage based on enterprise-class EMC storage technologies. Meant for small businesses and remote offices, it easily integrates with existing infrastructure for expanded storage, file-sharing and backup of critical business data.

The four-drive NAS is based on the EMC LifeLine software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications. The device delivers fast data throughput, multiple RAID configurations and RSA based enterprise security protection features. It can support up to 25 networked users.

Available in 2TB or 4TB capacities, the ix4 provides centralized storage to business users lets them share, secure and protect their data. Users can access files from any networked Windows PC, Linux workstation or Macintosh computer for easy file-sharing, data backup and print-serving.

The StorCenter Pro ix4 can be configured with RAID 5, RAID 10 and JBOD. The four SATA II hard drives are hot-swappable. It also offers four USB 2.0 ports for adding printers or external hard drives. The Bluetooth capability allows users to upload contacts, photos from a cell phone or pocket PC while the Picture Transfer Protocol allows automatic transfer of photos from digital cameras via one of the USB ports.

The 2TB StorCenter Pro ix4-100 NAS Server is now available worldwide for $799.95 while the 4TB StorCenter Pro ix4-100 will be available later this for $1,299.95.

Nokia have unveiled their latest XpressMusic cellphone, the Nokia 5630. This slim candybar runs the Symbian S60 operating system. It is also the slimmest and lightest N-Gage device yet at just 12mm thin and weighing only 83g.

Nokia 5630 comes loaded with a 3.5mm headphone connector, stereo Bluetooth, FM stereo, Internet radio and also includes a 4GB microSD card. It also offers a 3.2 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and 4x zoom. The new animated Contacts Bar lets you interact with up to 20 contacts directly from the home screen. The ’say and play’ feature lets you speak the name of an artist of track to automatically play it.

Wireless connectivity includes HSDPA as well as HSUPA for high-speed uploads and downloads. It would allow users to exploit internet services such as widgets, Ovi Share and Nokia Messaging.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2009 for around 199 Euros.

Sony has announced finger vein authentication technology called "Mofiria." Sony says it offers higher accuracy on personal identification and forgery resistance because it uses the veins inside the human body. Finger vein patterns differ from person to person and do not change over the years. The user-friendly technology can be mounted on mobile devices such as a personal computer or mobile phone.

Mofiria uses a unique method where a CMOS sensor diagonally captures scattered light inside the finger veins. The captured finger vein image, and data from the pattern is compressed into the size of one-tenth to store in memory. The position of a placed finger is automatically and simultaneously corrected. Sony claims authentication accuracy of less than 0.1% for the FRR (False Rejection Rate) and less than 0.0001% for the FAR (False Acceptance Rate). Identification takes only about 0.015 sec using a personal computer CPU and about 0.25 sec when using a mobile phone CPU.

Sony says it plans to commercialize mofiria in the 2009 fiscal year, incorporating it into mobile devices, gateway security systems and solution services.

Hitachi has announced the CinemaStar C5K500, a 2.5-inch hard drive available in capacities up to 500GB. Sporting a halogen-free design, the CinemaStar drive is designed for use in continuous “24x7” applications. It is meant to be used in DVRs, set-top boxes and surveillance systems.

The drives feature a low read/write power specification of 1.4W, which is 22 percent lower than previous models. Hitachi says its SmoothStream technology enhances streaming functionality in digital video applications. It also features technology to provide time-limited error recovery, enhanced thermal monitoring capabilities and silent-seek acoustics for ultra-quiet operation.

“The explosion of digital music and photos, combined with widespread access to high-definition television content, is driving DVR capacity requirements to new levels,” said Brendan Collins, vice president, Product Marketing, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “The new CinemaStar drive will allow DVR manufacturers to deliver compact DVRs with all the capacity and features of larger form factor products.”

The 5,400 RPM drive will be available in capacities ranging from 160 to 500GB. Expected to ship in the second quarter of the year, the pricing of CinemaStar C5K500 has not yet been announced.

QNAP has introduced TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS, the world's first 4-bay intel atom-based network attached storage.

The TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS features low power Intel 1.6GHz CPU and 1GB DDRII memory. It supports dual Giga LAN and offers five USB 2.0 ports. The device also supports RAID 0/1/5/6/5+spare configurations, Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration. It offers data protection with AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, and SSL secure certificate.

"The TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS presents a new definition of high scalability, high redundancy, large storage capacity and high stability NAS in the current market. The 4-bay NAS supports up to 6TB storage capacity which can be further expanded by connecting external hard drives to the five USB ports and two eSATA ports. Yet, the NAS is able to maintain low power consumption by the energy-saving Intel CPU which allows 24x7 operation in the business environment," says Troy Lin, Product Manager from QNAP

The TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS also provides a wide array of server functions like file server, FTP server, DDNS support, Web server with built-in phpMyAdmin, Joomla, MySQL/ SQLite, editable php.ini, MySQL server and printer server. The device enables file sharing across Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms.

QNAP has not said anything yet on the price or availability of the TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS.

LaCie has announced d2 Blu-ray Drive that burn Blu-ray discs up to 8x standard data writing rates.

The LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive can pack up to 50 GB of data, or four hours of high-definition video, on a single Blu-ray disc. The drive features a pair of firewire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity for high-speed throughput between the drive and a PC or Mac.

“With the doubling of the speed to burn Blu-ray discs, video professionals will be able to spend more time creating content and less time on production,” said Christelle Dexet, Multimedia Product Manager for LaCie. “And for those who need to safely store large quantities of information for extended periods of time on secure removable media, the LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive is an ideal solution.”

The LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive comes bundled with the newly revised Easy Media Creator 10 and Toast 9 Titanium software, that lets users master video and audio files onto Blu-ray, DVD and CD discs. Users can also schedule backups for data files, edit videos, create audio mixes and much more.

It supports a dozen Blu-ray, DVD and CD formats, including BD-ROM, BD-ROM AACS, BD-R, BD-RE, DVD±R, CD-R and others. It also records DVDs at up to 16X, CDs up to 48X, and supports dual-layer DVD recording for up to 8x.

The drive is available now with the cost starting at $449.99.

CalDigit has announced CalDigit VR, the two drive RAID system offering impressive performance, and superior quality in a sleek and easily upgradable enclosure.

The quadruple interface of CalDigit VR supports USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA drives. It has two hot swappable drive modules for easy replacement and expansion. The storage device offers speeds up to 220MB/s in RAID 0, and over 100MB/s with RAID 1 protection.

An environmental monitor provides detailed information about temperature, fan RPM and hard drive health. The all aluminum enclosure of CalDigit VR provides additional heat dissipation. It comes with software that provides easy management, monitoring, diagnostic repots, email notifications, and firmware update capabilities.

It also includes a security lock as well as locking drive modules. It also provides password protection against unauthorized changes to the sensitive data.

The CalDigit VR is priced at $500 for the 1.28TB model. A 4TB model is also expected to be released soon.