Mobile Devices - Page 171

I'm not all that excited for Windows 8 on desktop, but mobile devices like tablets and hybrid beasts are going to be amazing with Microsoft's upcoming operating system. Sony has made the news today with PocketNow reporting of their upcoming VAIO Duo 11.

Sony's VAIO Duo 11 looks to be an 11-inch device, thanks to the '11' in its name, and the 'Duo' parts seems to point toward the fact that its a convertible tablet. More details on the device aren't available right now, but it looks like the convertible tablet also sports the ability to use a stylus pen.

This means we should be able to use the Sony tablet as a normal tablet with our fingers, and when we want to do some handwriting, we can whip out the stylus pen and go all Picasso on the VAIO Duo 11. The keyboard looks to be backlit, which is another bonus. The keyboard is not detachable, and I think this is a great idea. These hybrid devices should sport a thin, but attached, keyboard. Typing on a tablet feels ridiculous, and if you can type relatively fast, you'll respect Sony's decision to include an attached keyboard.

We already know that the new LG phone "really flies", but what else will the new superphone contain? Well, it will be the first to bake in Qualcomm's new APQ8064 processor, and it will also be the first to sport LG Display's new True HD IPS+.

LG have said that the 'G' (no Optimus, unlike how we reported yesterday) will sport a 4.7-inch 1280x768 LCD that will be capable of pushing an all-white screen at 470 nits of brightness, all while using 70% less power than AMOLED. LG's new display, unlike most AMOLED-based displays on the market, will have an ordinary RGB stripe instead of the RGBG PenTile pixel arrangement.

LG have also said that the new screen technology will get baked into the company's Optimus Vu 2, too. LG's new superphone will also be the first to sport a new laminated touchscreen, the G2 Touch Hybrid Display. LG have said that the "unibody" design has allowed them to cut 30% off of the screen's thickness.

In order to get the Raspberry Pi's pricing down to a low point, there had to be some cuts made to its abilities. First of which, was the cull of MPEG-2 decoding. MPEG-2 licensing fees would've increased the Raspberry Pi's pricing by at least 10%.

But, it looks like the foundation has found a way around this, and for just $3.16, users can purchase an individual MPEG-2 license for each of their boards through the organizations' online store. The same goes for Microsoft's VC-1 standard, which can be purchased for $1.58.

H.264 encoding isn't left out, with OpenMax components needed to develop applications with H.264 functionality, and are now enabled from the latest firmware. With CEC tagging along for the ride, we're also looking at XBian and OpenELEC operating systems that can use a single IR remote to control a Raspberry Pi, a TV and other connected goods.

Apple currently have the new iPhone close to release (if all rumors, and their event is to be believed to be the launch event for the iPhone), a smaller, 7.85-inch iPad and now a newly redesigned iPod touch coming out.

GizChina is reporting with photos of what they're calling a new case for the next-gen iPod touch, showing a less-tapered design. The case shows off a wider rear camera hole, which could be just big enough to allow an LED flash to be added. There's still the "mystery hole" that the Macotakara report noted on, which is located in the lower corner of the rear shell versus the center.

It looks as though some specs and images have leaked of HTC's upcoming Proto handset. The photos show off the Proto's change to HTC's usual chassis that the One series sports.

The picture above shows off a matte black finish, with capacitive Android navigation buttons. As you can see, there's no front-facing camera, so it looks like we won't be doing any video calling or 'selfies' for the social network of your choice. HTC's Proto sports Beats Audio branding, which means the company seems to still be working with Beats, for now.

The Proto should be close to the One V when it comes to its innards, expecting to sport a 4-inch WVGA screen, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a Snapdragon dual-core 1GHz processor. It should measure in at 9.62mm in thickness.

Hot on the heels of their loss to Apple in their patent case, Samsung have unveiled a teaser video for their upcoming Windows 8 hybrid device. The video below shows off some of the upcoming features of the Windows 8-based device.

The video is quite the tease, with just mere seconds of glimpses of the device itself. Samsung have used images of clockwork solar systems, Old Master diagrams, and mathematical formulae, to tease their upcoming product. Samsung uses all of this, and calls it an "evolution of technology".

The device looks to be similar to current notebooks, sporting a headphone port and other inputs that are usually found on tablets on its upper edge. Things like an USIM slot, a microSD reader, and USB port. There was a Series 5 Hybrid Samsung device shown off earlier this year, featuring a detachable 11-inch, 1080p tablet screen that magnetically connected to a keyboard dock.

According to a report by Reuters, LG Display have officially kicked off the start of mass-production on the new displays that are said to get baked into the new iPhone. Apple's media event to unveil the new smartphone is only three weeks away, which is beginning to make sense that the Cupertino-based company will definitely announce a new iPhone within the month.

Han Sang-beom, chief executive of LG Display, has said "we just began mass production and we don't expect any disruption in supplies". The new display is said to feature in-cell technology to embed touch sensors directly into the display, which should make the new iPhone a little slimmer than the current iPhone 4S model.

The Wall Street Journal is also talking about Apple's plans for the in-cell technology that will hopefully be featured in Apple's upcoming iPhone:

Android Central have quite the exclusive today, where they've revealed that the international Samsung Galaxy S III (GT-i9300) will receive its Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update next week, after Samsung's Mobile Unpacked event which is being held in Berlin, Germany.

Android Central report the news from "sources familiar with Samsung's plans" that the firmware for the S III is in the "final stages of testing". We should expect the JB update to arrive within days of the Mobile Unpacked event, which starts next Wednesday, August 29. We should also expect Samsung to unveil their Galaxy Note II at the event, which means it should be quite the explosive event once things get underway.

After Mobile Unpacked, Android Central report that the update should roll out to several countries, including the UK. There's currently no information on whether the LTE-capable Snapdragon S4-powered Galaxy S III will receive Jelly Bean updates, but we should expect Samsung to give the same JB love to their US-based customers, too. More information as it happens.

Samsung's pen-toting, Galaxy Note 10.1 only saw the light of day last Friday, but iFixit's engineers have already had their hands in its internals. What did they find? Well, along with high-res photos and a bunch of detailed notes, they found that it is an impressively thin slate, and have said that its repairability is excellent.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is thinner than Apple's third-generation 'new iPad', but iFixit found it surprisingly serviceable. iFixit found that Samsung used only a tiny amount of glue, only five different sized screws and the South Korean-based company didn't fuse the inexpensive digitizer to the expensive display panel. Inside the Galaxy Note 10.1, iFixit found some detailed specs on some of its innards.

iFixit found a 1.4GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos CPU + GPU chip, Wolfson WM12811AE audio chip and 2GB of Samsung-branded memory. iFixit have also noted that the Note 10.1 is the first tablet they've taken apart the sports EMI shields held down with screws, versus being anchored by more permanent methods such as soldering. The teardown also revealed Samsung have opted to use a 25.9 watt-hour battery, which is expected to give the 10.1-inch slate around 8 hours of battery life. Compare this to the third-gen iPad's 42.5 watt-hour battery which promises 10 hours of life, it's quite the thickness Samsung have saved, and they haven't lost too much hours out of the life of the slate, either.

Apple's sixth-generation 'new iPhone' will be announced next month, hopefully, and until then I think we're going to see, and hear, more and more rumors of the smartphone. The latest thing to hit the Internet are some leaked shots of the front panel of the new iPhone.

I've taken a stance of calling it the 'new iPhone', because I just can't see Apple naming it with a number, I really think we're going to see the same naming scheme as the third-generation iPad. The 'new iPad' was known as just that. Apple's new iPhone is looking to be a 4-inch device, up from the 3.5-inch screen on every single iPhone to date.

It should also sport 4G LTE connectivity, NFC, and a 7.6mm-thin case. All of this should be unveiled, and confirmed, at Apple's press conference which is being held on September 12th. Until then, most of these posts will be designated as "LeakedTT" or "RumorTT".

Weekend news ahoy! ASUS have taken to their Facebook page to notify users of their Transformer Pad TF300 that they should expect quite the over-the-air (OTA) update. The update in question is to the OS itself, upgrading it to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

It has seemingly come out of nowhere, as we didn't really hear much from ASUS before this. But, you can't really complain about an upgrade to Google's latest and greatest mobile OS. ASUS said on their Facebook page:

While Microsoft Surface may not retail at the rumored $199, Lenovo's David Schmoock has provided a bit more information about pricing for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT devices at launch. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said new devices based upon Windows RT (ARM tablets) will cost $200-300 less than those using Windows 8 (x86 tablets).

"RT will play in consumer and retail at very aggressive price points," said David Schmoock, head of Lenovo's North America operations. "It will do well but it's going to be more of a consumer price point play to begin with," he said. Windows 8 tablets are going to cost $600-$700, he said, a price that is slightly cheaper than most current Ultrabooks.

Using these two pieces of information, we can deduce that Windows RT tablets will debut at somewhere around $300-$500, likely closer to the $300 number than the $500 number, though it could be $500 if the lower and higher numbers are chosen, respectively. $300 is close to the rumored $199 and still beats the current iPad 3. It could have trouble, however, competing with the latest round of $199 Android tablets released recently.

When I hear military-grade, I immediately hear "expensive," however, that's not the case with Fujitsu's new military-grade tablet. At $549, it's $50 less than a storage-comparable Apple iPad 3--and the device even weighs less than it does. It manages all of this while being tested to meet or exceed military durability standard MIL-STD-810G.

So just what do you get with the Fujitsu M532? Well, it features a quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 1 GB of RAM stuffed behind a 10.1-inch IPS display running at WXGA (1280 x 800) resolution. Camera-wise, it features an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a two-megapixel front-facing camera.

It weighs in at just 1.23 pounds which, as I said, is less than the iPad 3's 1.44 pounds. Furthermore, the battery is said to last for 8.4 hours of video playback, which should get you through at least 3 movies and will get you most of the way to Europe from the United States. You also get a one-year license for device tracking through Absolute Computrace.

We know that Amazon aren't just sitting on their hands over at Amazon HQ, and we've been teased that they were working on a larger Kindle Fire, but it looks like it cleared the FCC yesterday. The Digital Reader has a scoop from a friend of his, who tipped him to a bunch of FCC documents that were posted yesterday.

It doesn't show much, but the site reports "Like Amazon's past FCC submissions, this paperwork belongs to a new front company. This time around the company is Harpers LLC." Every time Amazon has thrown a new device through the FCC, they've used a new front company and then used a magic wand to make the paperwork disappear. Amazon have done this for every e-reader and tablet since the second iteration of the Kindle.

The Digital Reader has donned their detective hat and looked into Harpers LLC, looking at the address that leads back to a storefront rented by CSC Entity Services, with the man named on the paperwork as the President of Harpers, also works for CSC. Stephen Facciolo appears on LinkedIn as a service leader for CSC, which has led Nate (the reporter on The Digital Reader) to conclude that CSC is the legitimate front company that Amazon has hired to run a second front company so that the FCC paperwork trail doesn't lead back to them.

Microsoft has been quiet about pricing for the upcoming Surface tablets. Announced out of nowhere, Microsoft showed off an incredibly polished tablet and told us all about it. Everything we could want to know was laid out--except launch date and launch price. We now know the launch date, and reports are now surfacing regarding the launch price.

Of course, take this with the usual grain of salt--throw some over your shoulder just to be safe. Citing an inside source, Engadget is reporting that the launch price will be $199. This is reportedly from a session, which laid out all of the launch details, held at Microsoft's TechReady15 conference.

There's no way Microsoft is producing the tablets for that money, so they must be doing what console manufacturers have been doing for years: trying to make their money back off of the software and games sold for the device. At that price, it's in direct competition with the new Google Nexus 7 and is cheaper than the iPad (and rumored iPad mini).

Looking for a new device on the Sprint network? Maybe they can interest you in their upcoming Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE phone that they recently announced? How about if you know the price and release date? Well, the phone officially went on pre-order today for $199.99 and will be available August 19.

The new phone may seem a bit old fashioned with its QWERTY-keyboard and all, but Sprint assures users that there is a place in the market for such a phone. "At Sprint, we recognize there is a large group of our customers that love the ease of a physical QWERTY keyboard," said David Owens, vice president - Product Development, Sprint. "By bringing a device like Motorola PHOTON Q into our portfolio, we are able to give these customers the option of a physical keyboard plus international roaming capabilities to stay connected while traveling abroad."

The device runs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor which is supported by 1GB of RAM. The screen is a 4.3-inch ColorBoost™ display which runs at a rather low resolution of only 540 x 960. The phone also comes with NFC, LTE wireless connectivity, SD card support, and an 8MP camera. The whole device is powered by Android ICS 4.0.4.

It looks like Samsung's T-Mobile-branded phone, now known officially as the Galaxy S Blaze Q is nearly here. The image below is thanks to TmoNews, and its showing off that it's a slider, and sports a full QWERTY keyboard.

The Galaxy A Blaze Q comes out on August 15, and Samsung had already stated they would be announcing a new Galaxy on this date. How does the Blaze Q spec against its other Galaxy brothers? Well, we're looking at a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage.

Display-wise, it reportedly contains a 720p display, and a rear camera capable of taking 1080p video. It should arrive with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but it might come with an schedule for an upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

It looks like Microsoft is going all-in with their Surface-branded tablets, with the company looking for more people to work for company in the form of hardware and software engineers that will have the tak of working on the next generation Surface tablets.

The first Surface, due out in two or so months, should be Microsoft's biggest fight against Apple, ever. Since the Redmond-based company is looking for people for the next Surface, before the original has even been released, we know that the fight is going to be epic. One of the job listings seems to be on the request for a senior electrical engineer who would be working on "the electrical design and qualification of AC-DC power supplies and adapters", so it looks like we should expect battery-powered devices, too.

Something else worth pointing out is that the company is looking for engineers to work on "alternative power sources", meaning we could see fuel cell-based power (or similar tech) in future Surface devices.

While there has been no official announcement of a coming black Samsung Galaxy S III, a couple of pictures have popped up on the Samsung Olympics Facebook page which include a black Galaxy S III. This is likely to keep interest in the Galaxy S III so that it can better compete with the upcoming iPhone 5.

The first image, shown above, features both a black Galaxy S III and a white one. It's highly unlikely to be an optical illusion as another picture with a black Galaxy S III is also online (see below). At least one black Galaxy S III has to exist, and many more are possibly being manufactured as I type this.

The launch will probably occur sometime around the launch of the next iPhone, rumored to be September 12, in order to draw attention back from the rival's product. The question is, will this be enough to keep Samsung and the Galaxy S III on a hot streak? It's already managed to sell 10 million units in 2 months, but the iPhone will steal at least part of its thunder.

If you're looking into buying a tablet for your return to school, you might just think about holding off for a little bit. Engadget has heard from an anonymous tipster that Samsung will be releasing a student edition of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 that will be sliding onto Best Buy's shelves bundled with a keyboard and USB adapter.

The tablet itself will be the 8GB Wi-Fi only model that already retails for $249, so holding off for a few weeks will net you a free keyboard and USB adapter for free. The device is said to be coming to shelves near you on August 19, just in time for most people who would be buying it for college, and just a week into high school.

If you're still conducting research and weighing the pros and cons of the different devices, this is something you would want to consider. If you go with the Google Nexus 7, you'll have to purchase these extras separately, something likely to drive the price beyond the $249 selling point of the new student version of the Galaxy Tab 2.