The recently announced iPhone 4S had pre-orders last Friday and they should start hitting retail stores and customers door steps on this Friday. But, while industry-folk were mostly underwhelmed by the iPhone 4S, Apple still managed to break sales records by scooping up over one million pre-orders in 24 hours, impressive. Now that the initial first week wave of buzz is over, we can move onto the juicy bits: actual reviews.

The iPhone 4S packs a new dual-core A5 processor (like the iPad 2 sports), an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with 1080p recording capabilities, the swish new Siri voice recognition technology and 14.4Mbps HSDPA support. It is also the hero standing in the wind for iOS 5. Now we have reviews, maybe not real-world, in-the-hands-of-real-customers reviews, but closer than the marketing magic that Apple sprinkle onto their followers.

First up we have Joshua Topolsky of The Verge talking about the iPhone 4S' new camera:

Samsung's current flagship Android-based handset, the Galaxy S II has won Phone of the Year award at the T3 awards. This is the first time in three years that Apple or HTC have not won the prize, so Samsung really are shining bright right now. The Galaxy S II packs a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen, an 8-megapixel camera and 1GB of RAM. Luke Peters, editor of T3 talked about the GSII:

Even though Apple missed out on Phone of the Year, Apple did take home three awards. First of all, the MacBook Air 11-inch took out the T3 Design Award and Computer of the Year, whilst the iPad took home Tablet of the Year. Microsoft actually didn't too bad, as they won Gaming Gadget of the Year and overall Gadget of the Year for their motion-sensing gizmo, Kinect.

Start-up company BlueStacks has rubbed their hands together and produced some magical app that allows Android apps to run on all Windows PC, as it is ready to start publicly testing its software. BlueStacks is making an alpha of its software available to the public. But their long-term goals are to have both a free and a paid version of its software and to have it loaded onto new PCs. The alpha version of the software allows most (not all) Android apps to be loaded onto a PC, but prohibits some games such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja - which will be left for the paid version of the app.

BlueStacks VP, John Garguilo said in an interview "We're very happy with the degree to which apps work, not every app will work perfectly." That I agree with, we can't expect every app to work perfectly, but for just an app to appear [for what seems] out of nowhere, this is a magic day indeed. BlueStack's app will actually ship with several Android apps already preloaded and users will have the ability to push programs from their phone or tablet to the PC from a program that will be on the Android market.

I'm sure you have taken many photos that have been blurry, but Adobe is looking at erasing this problem with a new feature that they demoed at the company's MAX 2011 event. It had the crowd gasping from amazement as before their eyes they had a blurred photo, retouched and perfected in seconds. Advanced algorithms calculate the movement of the camera at the time the image was taken, enabling the user to 'fix' the image by unblurring it - saving what would usually be a photo that would end up in your recycling bin.

The video shown below (which ironically, is shakey itself) demonstrates the process can be used on a photo captured on a mobile device to sharpen the quality, and in some cases with text-based images, reveal more data. There is no official release date for the anti-blur feature, but it will definitely be a favorite for millions worldwide when it becomes available.

Dual-core phones are all the rage now, with Android-based smartphones rocking dual-core power for a while now and Apple finally catching up to the two-legged race with their upcoming iPhone 4S. But, Windows Phone unit boss, Andy Lees said that he hopes to become the solid No. 3 platform and a viable alternative to Apple and Android. What has helped them achieve this is a rocky, but stable start and with the Windows Phone 7 Mango update now rolling out - things are looking up for Microsoft.

Lees has been quoted:

A fresh roadmap looking deep into 2012 reveals that Intel is planning to hit the SSD market harder than ever with new series' on the horizon that will cover pretty much all major market segments.

We've already seen some refreshments in their SSD product range recently, and more to follow before the year is out. These include the SSD 520 "Cherryville", SSD 710 "Lyndonville", SSD 720 "Ramsdale", and "Hawley Creek" mSATA SSDs. These will maintain the lead into the first quarter of 2012, and as the second quarter comes around Intel will introduce its "Ramsdale MLC" and "King Crest" families to market.

But the biggest changes are to be seen into the third quarter of 2012 when "Taylorsville" hits the scene. This is said to be a successor to SSD 710 "Lyndonville" and will bring significant capacity increases going as large as 800GB.

Microsoft have set the goal of reducing the overall runtime memory requirements of the core system, this is a benefit to everyone and will allow people to run more and more apps, or many apps simultaneously on systems with only 1 or 2GB of RAM. Microsoft are wanting to reduce Windows 8's memory footprint as it will be pumping away on SoC-based devices which will have not only limited specs compared to a full blown desktop, but they also have batteries that don't last forever.

As Microsoft say "If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get. Having additional RAM on a tablet device can, in some instances, shave days off the amount of time the tablet can sit on your coffee table looking off but staying fresh and up to date." This is very true, so reducing the memory footprint is a very, very important move.

Microsoft's goal with Windows 8 was to ship with the same system requirements as Windows 7, and Microsoft thinks they've reached that point, as well as exceeded it. Microsoft ran a test with Windows 7 vs Windows 8 to see what its memory usage was like in a system with 1GB of RAM (the minimum OS RAM requirement) and compared them by rebooting multiple times, and then idled a few times. They used a 3+ year old netbook (the same one used at the //build/ keynote) and below we have a screenshot of Windows 7 SP1 and under that, Windows 8.

Zynga is holding a press event tomorrow in San Francisco dubbed "Zynga Unleashed", where it is expected to share its plans on how they're going to use Facebook's new HTML5-based mobile platform. Facebook's platform was announced this afternoon and runs on Apple's iOS devices as well as across the mobile Web. It will allow game developers such as Zynga to connect versions of the same application on PC and mobile devices.

In order to achieve this, developers will build applications in HTML5, rather than the commonly used Adobe Flash technology. Zynga is expected to launch "selected titles" tomorrow, with other developers set to follow such as EA, Moblyng, Storm8 and Wooga. Zynga are quite on what they're bringing to the table tomorrow, saying to AllThingsD they "will have HTML5 games coming soon the Facebook's mobile apps site".

SVP at EA Interactive, CJ Prober said:

After months of speculation, opinion, leaks and other events, Facebook have today launched what people have expected: a mobile app platform as well as Facebook for iPad. Before this, Facebook users had to use their computers for gaming and app needs (or obsessions) where now, they should be able to play and participate from almost any device with a web browser. This experience amplifies if you're on an Apple iOS-based device.

It was rumored that Facebook were totally against Apple, with iOS 5 having Twitter integration but this news is joy to the ears of Facebook and Apple users. The reason is simple. Facebook apps and more importantly, games, don't work on phones or tablets because iOS devices don't support Flash. Facebook has now helped a select group of developers, Audiovroom, Branchout, EA, Flixster, Gilt Groupe, Huffington Post, Moblyng, Storm8, Wooga and Zynga, all create HTML5-based versions of a selection of their apps and game titles that will work within Web browsers.

HTML5 doesn't quite offer the performance that many apps require, so if the developers have created native versions of their app, they can also connect Facebook users directly to that native application. For example, a friend sends you a request to play Words With Friends and you view it on the Facebook app on your iPhone, you can click to play and be taken directly to the Words With Friends app. If you don't have the app, that's fine, as you'll get directed to Apple's App Store. If you're on an Android device, you'll be taken to an HTML5 version in your mobile Web browser.

I don't get how people are surprised by this news, other tech sites seem to be taken aback by one of the most influential, most powerful and [at times] most innovative companies of the last 25 years to have a four-year roadmap? I'm surprised it wasn't further down the line and maybe not exact points of where they'll get, but at least "this is where we want to be in ten years time" kinda thinking. But, there is now news that Jobs' legacy at Apple includes a four-year product roadmap and a "new line of products to be rolled out over the next two to three years."

Steve had reportedly "already laid plans" for next-gen iOS-based devices, the iPhone, iPod and iPad. The report comes from Develop who are claiming that British newspaper 'The Times' has claimed that due in late 2012 or early 2013, we should see the next iPhone which will be Jobs "legacy device". The news also brings the rumor of Apple rolling out a full touch-screen TV that would kill of its current product; Apple TV.

I don't see this as an actual, Apple TV that sits in your lounge room with you [the consumer] having to get up and actually swipe the TV to use it. If it were up to my assumptions and guesses of how the industry will evolve with TVs and interaction between the user and the TV then I would guess that it would be an Apple-branded TV, with an Apple remote that is like an iPad. A touch-screen, gesture-driven remote control that controls your TV. A next-generation remote for a next-generation TV. Everything streams (or is downloaded) from iTunes, can be stored locally on NAS or HDDs, or even Time Machine setups.

I think we've all come to expect mammoth waves of sales figures post fresh Apple device launches no matter what it is in this day and age, and while for many the newly launched iPhone 4S was quite an underwhelming one, it looks like Apple were right once again in anticipating mass success with what they had on the cards, shortening its name from iPhone 4Sales so it would seem.

An overwhelming amount of preorders have taken place over the first weekend since launch last week with more than one million phones sold within the first 24 hrs of being on sale! This makes it yet another new record for Apple according to this announcement earlier today. AT&T actually received more than 200,000 requests for the iPhone 4S within the first 12 hrs of its preorder availability on Friday which is even higher than the sales pace post launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010, which sold 1.7 million units during the first three days in the market and 600,000 within the first 24 hours.

As a result of such intensive demand, Apple has already shifted its shipping times on its website to say "one to two weeks", or until as far as October 23rd, despite the official availability date being Oct 14th.

Closing in on the big X79 / Sandy Bridge-E launch in mid November and today we get a peek of another X79 board with all the final fancy trimmings in place. This is ASRock's entry into the next-gen LGA2011 field with its X79 Extreme7. It inevitably won't be the only X79 from ASRock to turn up at launch, but it's the first we get to take a good look at pre-launch thanks to some chaps over at XFastest.

Sporting a 16-phase VRM with high grade chokes and server grade poscap capacitors, you know this is one serious piece of hardware straight off the bat. There are six DDR3 slots total, split into three on either side of the socket that are powered via a 4-phase VRM and are ready to provide some of that lovely quad-channel DDR3 goodness. The overall heatsink design looks super serious (and rather awesome!) with there even being heatsinks over the memory VRM areas that are connected to the heatsink over the CPU VRM via heat-pipes.

As for expansion slots, there are five x16 slots total with two being able to run full bandwidth PCI-E 3.0 x16, and four at PCI-E 3.0 x8 bandwidth (dependant on the add-on card configuration). You get 11 SATA ports internally, seven of which are SATA 3Gb/s and four being SATA 6Gb/s, while there is also an eSATA 3Gb/s port on the rear I/O.

Following the passing of Steve Jobs last week we've seen an absolute mass of news come out about the man who undeniably changed the face of one of the largest industries in the world. But if I asked the majority of you what brand/model of car he drove, I'd be surprised if 5% of you knew (prior to a frantic google search for the answer, that is). Don't worry, I was in the 95% that didn't until today as well.

One thing I can now say, while he might not have always had good taste in the way he went about running the show at Apple, he certainly did when it came to cars :-

While I hear many of you shouting out "But I really couldn't give a rats bum what he drove", there is something else in the picture above that is the main point of interest here. Notice anything that stands out? (Or perhaps I should say, doesn't in this case).

eXtreme Outer Vision's online PSU Calculator tool serves as a very useful one when wanting to ensure a given power supply is enough to meet the demands of all the specs crammed into a particular system. It assits in helping one determine not so much just how many Watts their exact system configuration needs, but even more importantly how much amperage is required to back said Wattage up.

The service has just been updated with an easier, faster way to select your CPU and video card(s). The Lite version of the tool also now supports up to four video cards + a PPU (Physics Processing Unit). Furthermore, all the most recent video card models from both AMD and NVIDIA have been added to the list of selections along with new sockets including LGA 2011, AM3+ and FM1. With that, there are now a range of Intel Sandy Bridge-E processors, AMD Zambezi and latest server class Xeon and Opteron processors to choose from.

If you're in the market now, or in the near future for a quality PSU to power up your new rig, this tool should serve as a great guide in helping you make a wise decision about your purchase without under-cutting or going overboard.

Intel is currently staying quiet on whether there will be a new Core i7 introduced to combat the impending launch of AMD's Bulldozer, but it seems there is going to be a bigger, badder brother released in the LGA1155 lineup. It is rumored that Intel is going to drop the 2700K onto the market, which will be a minor clock speed increase over the already available Intel Core i7 2600K. The 2600K is a 3.4GHz part with the 2700K set to be a 3.5GHz part, with Turbo enabled those speeds will be 3.8 and 3.9GHz, respectively.

The 2600K known is for its super high overclocking ability, with 4.5GHz+ achievable with decent air cooling, so the 2700K should achieve the same type of overclock as its just a 2600K with an extra 100MHz in the trunk. The conservative speed bump will keep the gates open for a future 2800K, as Intel need to keep a space between regular Sandy Bridge and the Extreme chips. We should soon what happens, but there are already people who have cranked up an engineering sample of the 2700K to an impressive 5GHz on air cooling.

Impressive? It's impressive, with a silent K.

Current Android-based smartphones in the high-end market sport 800x480 (WVGA) or 960x540 (qHD) displays, but Google's next-gen OS, Ice Cream Sandwich is set to change that. ICS should embrace higher resolutions including 1280x720. Samsung are already showing off a 720p version of the Galaxy S II, and the upcoming ICS launch phone from Samsung is boasting a 720p display as well.

LCD panel vendor LG, who are also in the smartphone making market are now hopping on the 720p Android train with the Optimus LTE. LG is calling the Optimus LTE's display True HD IPS display. The True HD IPS panel boasts a 4.5-inch screen with a pixel density of 329 ppi thanks to its 1280x720 resolution display (which is slightly higher than Apple's Retina Display at 326 ppi). Today's news and details about the Optimus LTE doesn't give any details, but the screen details are enough to make us salivate with desire.

RAGE has had its first patch and with it brings many, many bug fixes and improvements. Because RAGE changes the graphics quality on-the-fly to maintain that silky smooth 60fps, there are some hiccups. This is part of what has been addressed in the patch and the list of issues fixed is quite long.

Here is a list of Patch Changes / Fixes:

- Implemented workaround for AMD driver crash right after intro cinematic

Qualcomm has laid an egg, and from that egg we have some details on their upcoming System-on-a-Chip the S4, their next-generation beauty. It'll bring with it a 28nm manufacturing process as which will have on it Qualcomm's Krait CPU and Adreno 225 GPU. The move from 45nm to 28nm promises smaller components, lower power consumption and improved thermals.

Krait on the other hand will bring a new pipeline architecture that promises a full 60% boost over the current Scorpion lineup with clock speeds ranging between 1.5GHz and 2.5GHz - along with support for asynchronous multiprocessing and dual-channel memory. The new GPU is set to sport 50% greater performance over the current Adreno 220, and is also set to have support for DirectX 9.3 for Windows 8, in addition to OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0.

On top of all these whizz-bang specs, the new S4 MSM8960 sets to provide multi-mode world capabilities with support for all the commonly used frequencies from 700 to 2600MHz. It handles Cat. 3 LTE (up to 100Mbps) and Cat. 24 HSPA+ (up to 42Mbps), along with EV-DO Rev. B, 1x Advanced and TD-SCDMA, as well as GSM, GPRS and EDGE. Quite the mouthful of connectivity options, huh?

Sony says that the time is still not right for download-only consoles that sell games exclusively through digital distribution systems, company bosses have said. This goes hand-in-hand with why there will be both physical and digital copies of games for their upcoming NGP, PlayStation Vita. Sony Worldwide Studios boss, Shuhei Yoshida, explained that Sony didn't believe Internet infrastructure was consistent enough across the world to support such a device.

SCEE boss, Jim Ryan agrees, saying that:

Oh boy. Just days after Apple's iPhone 4S announcement, the specs of Google's "Nexus Prime" smartphone have been leaked, and what a leak it is. Possibly called the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the phone is packing some seriously hot features. The long-awaited Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system will power the phone, along with a 9mm thin design. The Nexus Prime will feature a 4.65-inch, curved glass Super AMOLED HD display running at 1280x720 resolution.

If that's not impressive enough, it'll also sport a TI OMAP 4460 dual-core Cortex A9 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera as well as a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 1080p video capture, LTE/HSPA support (depending on the carrier), Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, NFC technology and last of all, a 1,750 mAh battery.

The device will be a pure Google device, this means that no third-party UI or other modifications will be done to ICS. It is also believed that the Galaxy Nexus could be a Verizon Wireless exclusive. The timing could not be better with the iPhone 4S being unveiled just days ago, but then there is the news that Samsung have pulled the launch of the Galaxy Nexus at the Samsung Unpacked event, which I wrote about a few days ago.