Samsung and Visa have announced plans to introduce mobile payments to the UK in time for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Both companies are sponsors of the London 2012 event.

There'll be a Samsung Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile phone provided to athletes and also available to the general public. The phone will also require a Visa-enabled SIM card to enable NFC contactless payments.

Samsung's unveiled a new tablet at this week's CTIA Wireless show in the United States. Just over a month ago it announced the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Barcelona... and it's now added to the range with the Galaxy Tab 8.9. (The figures refer to the screen size in inches).

In fact, a closer look reveals that the Tab 10.1 has changed since Barcelona.

Samsung Electronics has announced the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 Smart Player, which offers most of the features of the Galaxy S smartphone without the mobile phone connection. It includes a 4-inch LCD display, a 1GHz processor, the Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ operating system and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, giving access to Google Mobile Services and the Android Market.

Although GSM and 3G calls aren’t possible, voice and video calling is available over WiFi.

Samsung Electronics has announced the bada 2.0 smartphone platform, which includes support for Near Field Communication, web applications, multitasking and voice recognition. There’s also an improved Software Development Kit for developers.

The news comes a year after bada was launched at Mobile World Congress 2010.

Orange's move into mobile contactless services has continued with the launch of the Samsung Wave 578. It's an NFC-equipped handset running Samsung’s bada 1.1 operating system.

The Samsung Wave 578 will appear first on Orange networks in Spain, Poland and France before being rolled out to other European countries. However, Orange UK won't be offering this particular device.