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Google Releases Chrome Beta for Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Gadget News — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:54:41 +0000

Google is making progress with its own Internet browser, Google Chrome. The Google Chrome browser is now available for Android. Of course, the browser is currently in its beta-stages and is only available for devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. Google Chrome will be using a bookmarking system, much like the Kindle, only it can be used for websites instead of the chapters of a book. When you search for a website using your Chrome browser, it will be synced to your mobile device and Chrome will always remember the last website you were looking at with the browser, which is convenient if you need to stop what you are doing at the moment and come back. The Google Chrome browser will also offer previews of links, which is something that most people are familiar with, as it has been used for the result pages when a person searches for something using Google. Overall, it is expected to be very successful.

Gadget news digest – Nikon’s future 4K point and shoot, Kuel stylus pens, Intoxicase iPhone case and more

Gadget News — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:05:34 +0000

A lot of new devices, gadgets and accessories are being announced every single day, and our Gadget Digest series will try to keep you up to date with the most interesting things. Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

Nikon is already experimenting with a 4K sensor in a compact camera

Nikon’s 1 system, an ultra-compact ILC camera that was designed completely from the grounds up, is capable of shooting 2K and 4K video already, and the company is planning on bringing the feature to a future model sometimes this year. The J1 is the first of the series and it’s pretty popular with the buyers, and 4K video recording would make it even more flexible, plus it would make the camera much more impressive, as well.

Kuel shows off the H10 and H12 styli

Kuel has just entered the stylus market, which is going to explode soon, and their H10 and H12 styli (or is it styluses?) look very simple, elegant and functional. The H12 is a full sized version that resembles a normal ink pen and works perfectly on any capacitive digitizer, be it a tablet, smartphone or laptop (if you didn’t get the news, the newest business laptops now get touch panels, too). The H10 is a shorter version that is presumably intended for smartphones and is easier to carry with you everywhere. Both styli come in multiple colors, and cost only $12.99 and $19.99 for the H10 and H12, respectively – check them out if you want a simple and functional stylus.

The Intoxicase case lets you open beer bottles

There’s many things that the iPhone can do for you, but opening beer bottles is definitely not one of them. Eh, who are we kidding? Of course it can, it just needs a special case for the purpose! The Intoxicase and Intoxicase Plus are exactly what you need to get intoxicated with alcohol at any time if you only have your iPhone with you. Just use one of these cases instead of your usual one (you do have one, right?), and opening bottles will not be an issue. The cases are high quality, and the opener mechanism looks sturdy enough to withstand any kind of use – pretty ingenious, I might say.

RIM gives away free Blackberries to interested Android developers

RIM has pulled a lot of tricks out of their magic hat to market their devices, but there’s one thing that will always work – giving away free stuff. That’s exactly what the company decided to do with their Blackberry PlayBook tablet – if you are an Android developer with a good app on the marketplace and you happen to want a nice Playbook, all you have to do is port your app to their platform, get it accepted and RIM will be shipping the $200 device to you for free – a pretty sweet deal, considering you’ll also probably get more customers.

Avid Studio for iPad has just been released

In software news, Avid Studio (yes, from the same company that makes the professional desktop version) has just arrived on the iPad 2, and it’s ready to kick iMovie to the curb and take its place. Thanks to Avid’s know-how, the app has a lot of great video editing features, and it truly is a great competitor to iMovie – it’s a bit more complicated, though, so you’ll have to get used to it first if you want to edit HD videos on your iPad 2.

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Gadget news digest – Intel-based Lenovo K800, Toshiba Portege M930 x86 tablet, 21:9 format devices and more

Gadget News — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:09:15 +0000

There are a lot of new devices, gadgets and accessories being announced or demonstrated every day, and this series will keep you up to date with the most interesting and important releases. Here’s what we’ve got for you in today’s gadget digest:

Lenovo’s Racer A (aka K800) smartphone running on the Medfield SoC is pretty impressive

Lenovo has demonstrated the first ever Medfield (Intel’s x86 platform for mobile devices) smartphone, and despite it being a prototype it was pretty damn impressive. The SoC, which contains two 1.6 GHz Atom processors, was built using the older 32nm process, but despite that, the Lenovo K800 (or Racer A, if you prefer) has shown quite a good battery lifetime. The new 22nm process should make the chip even less power hungry. The performance of the chip is impressive – Android ran on the phone like it was on a native ARM CPU. Despite ARM saying that they don’t care, Medfield is definitely a potential game changer – expect to see full x86 software on smartphones in less than 5 years if Intel succeeds.

Toshiba’s Portege M930 is almost like the Asus EEE Pad Slider, only with Intel Inside

If you liked the Asus EEE Pad Slider, but are a fan of Windows rather than Android, you’ll love the Portege M930. The tablet runs on an Intel platform with a fast dual core Core i5 ULV processor, has 4 GB of RAM and a 256 GB solid state drive – that’s much more powerful than the EEE Pad Slider, for sure. The slider mechanism is very similar to the one on the Asus, although the keyboard is better. The device is big and heavy though – it’s 1.1 inches thick and weighs 4.2 pounds – it definitely needs to lower those numbers to be successful.

image: notebookitalia

Toshiba is also investigating the use of 21:9 format displays on mobile devices

Toshiba (again) is also trying to see whether a wider display format would be popular with the users, and the feedback has been positive so far. Their 21:9 format mockups look pretty unique, and while I don’t care for the super wide screen tablets, a long smartphone with a wide screen looks pretty appealing, especially when it can fit in my pocket and still be able to display full size Web pages (with a lot of vertical scrolling, but nonetheless).

Archos is quick to update the G9 tablets to quad cores and Ice Cream Sandwich

Archos is surprisingly quick to get into the quad core game, having announced that their 101 G9 and 80 G9 tablets will be receiving a small upgrade in the form of the Tegra 3 quad core processor and of course, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for software. The G9’s special feature is the huge storage capacity thanks to the use of actual hard drives, and with a quad core and ICS under the hood, the two models are worth a closer look.

ARM is helping startups bring better Augmented Reality to the real world

ARM is helping several startups optimize their AR apps to take full advantage of the CPU and GPU’s capabilities for a real time augmented reality experience. Thanks to their know how, the companies have demonstrated a very quick overlay of information and pointers on the smartphone’s display, as well as a very nice 3D tracking without the need for markers – it looks like AR will become big in the coming months.

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Past week’s top gadget news in the mobile industry

Gadget News — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:35:38 +0000

Well, another week has gone by, and we find ourselves recounting the events of the previous seven days once again. There’s been quite a lot of news in the mobile industry in the past week, so here’s a breakdown of the most important points:

Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8

Microsoft has officially taken the wraps off of their next operating system for smartphones – Windows Phone 8, code named “Apollo”. The new OS brings a lot of new features and improvements, among which the most important ones are the new Windows 8 kernel (shared with the full desktop version), support for multiple processor cores (up to 4), full on-device encryption, better integration with Exchange servers, support for NFC, tight integration with Skype and support for multiple resolutions. Windows Phone 8 certainly looks to be a great successor to Windows Phone 7, and it will finally allow Microsoft to compete on equal terms with Android and iOS.

Google added a “Bouncer” service to prevent malware on the Android Market

Google’s Android Market is great for both users and developers, with the latter being able to upload their apps and have them go live without long review times from the company, but that seems to have spurned a surge in malware – there are a lot of apps that are potential security threats on the market, and placing the responsibility on the users doesn’t seem to work for the big majority of people (no surprise there). Instead of going for an iTunes-like review process, Google created an automated service that scans the market and tests all the apps in virtual Android environment to see if they have any malware components to them, flagging or blocking the infringing apps – a very smart move on the company’s part.

Samsung is now responsible for 39% of the smartphone market

The smartphone market has gone through a lot of changes as of late, and as it stands, Samsung is responsible for shipping 39% of the world’s supply of smartphones. A very impressive number, seeing as they were a minor player after the iPhone was first released. Nokia still holds the reign with 46%, but it seems that their market share is slowly diminishing. Apple holds only 15% of the market, however they have the highest profits thanks to the premium price on their iPhones.

The American and Canadian governments approved the Blackberry 7 OS for official use

The US and Canadian governments have granted certification to RIM’s new Blackberry 7 OS, making it officially suitable for use in government agencies. The FIPS 140-2 certification demonstrates that the operating system has a suitable level of security to protect the information on the handsets and on the central servers. It appears that government employees will have to put up with standard issue Bolds, Torches and Curves for a while longer, at least until Android and/or Windows Phone get their security features up to task.

Microsoft opens the Windows Phone Marketplace to five new countries

Microsoft has opened access to the Windows Phone apps marketplace in five new countries: Peru, Malaysia, Argentina, Indonesia and the Philippines. Users who have bought phones there (or ordered them online) are now finally able to download and purchase apps officially, without any workarounds. Developers are also encouraged to make their apps available worldwide, so that anyone anywhere can enjoy them.

Apple’s iTV pushed back – shortage of IGZO panels to blame

Apple’s next revolutionary product will have to wait for a while longer, it seems, as the company has run into problems trying to find a reliable and stable supply of Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (aka IGZO) displays. The company insists on going with this technology because it has certain advantages over other panels, but there aren’t many companies that have enough of them for the iTV line to come out as scheduled. Let’s hope that the setbacks are temporary and that the smart TV revolution is coming soon, though.

That’s all the important news for the past week – come back for more next week on Gadgetmania.com or better yet, follow Us on Twitter, so you don’t miss a thing!

Windows Phone 8 Apollo finally announced – brings a lot of new capabilities for future handsets

Gadget News — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:48:44 +0000

Microsoft’s new mobile operating system has gone through a lot since it was released to the general public almost two years ago. Even though it’s nowhere near as popular as Android or Apple’s iOS, it’s still a pretty great OS, and with Nokia releasing the Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 (the best WP7 phones at the moment, IMO), it looks like things are going to take off soon. There are already enough good apps on the market to satisfy pretty much everyone, and the games look simply amazing.

The only thing the OS needs is better smartphones – single cores and no multitasking just isn’t going to cut it anymore. And Microsoft knows it, that’s why they’ve just announced the new version of the OS – Windows Phone 8, code named “Apollo”.

The new operating system uses the same kernel as the full, desktop version of Windows 8, which is just about to be released as a beta for testing. If you didn’t know, Windows 8 will supersede the current Windows 7 on x86 computers, and will also be available for ARM processors – that’s why the kernel exists in the first place.

Windows Phone 8 brings a lot of improvements, making it a true competitor to Android and iOS. The most important features that will allow phone manufacturers to use the latest and greatest hardware are the support for multiple cores, NFC sensors, multiple screen resolutions (notice how current phones all use the same 800×480 pixels resolution?), full micro SD card support (cards will appear as a separate drive, not integrate into the main storage space), and full on-device encryption (just in time for competing with Android Ice Cream Sandwich).

Those are all pretty important points that will make the OS more attractive to the everyday user, as well as corporations and businesses that need secure devices, which are also compatible with existing technologies and infrastructures. Windows Phone 8 will have much better support for Exchange servers – something that users have been complaining about Windows Phone 7 ever since it was launched.

Thanks to the use of the Windows 8 kernel, which has a long history behind it and is very advanced, Apollo will also be able to do things better and faster than Windows Phone 7. Its support for networking, security and multimedia is supposed to be unrivaled – the OS will be able to find and connect to wireless networks in less than 3 seconds, playback any video file with hardware GPU acceleration, and more.

At the same time, Apollo will be fully compatible with existing Windows Phone 7 apps, although developers will probably want to tweak a few things since the new kernel is slightly different. The full version of Internet Explorer is also present, having the best GPU-accelerated features yet, and a sleek and fast interface with support for Adobe Flash, HTML 5 and most of the new Web technologies. The browser is truly mature and can easily compete with Android’s Chrome or the iPhone’s Safari on equal grounds.

Microsoft also plans to tightly integrate Skype (their newly acquired VoIP service) and SkyDrive (their cloud storage service) with Windows Phone 8, giving users something akin to Apple’s iCloud or even better.

It really looks like 8 will be the most successful number in Microsoft’s history – both the desktop and mobile versions of the OS bring a lot of new features and improvements (more than any previous version!), and they’ll probably be around for around a decade, just like the undying Windows XP. I just hope that the company creates a better marketing strategy, since it seems that people hate their software too much without good reason.

Gadget news digest – Nikon’s new semi-pro cameras, Blackberry London, Apple’s new Time Capsule and more

Gadget News — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:01:03 +0000

A lot of new products get released every single day, and if you want to stay up to date with the flow and know about the more interesting releases and announcements, this article series is for you. Here are some of the newest gadgets that are coming to the market soon or are already in stores:

Blackberry London screenshots leak ahead of schedule

The much awaited (by Blackberry fans, anyway) Blackberry London finally got a few leaked screenshots of some promotion materials, and it looks like the phone has changed a bit from its dummy prototype unit, which had a distinct gray color and angular design. The leaked shots show that the final version will be black and have rounder edges, but still sport a slim profile and a new design that is distinctly different than any previous Blackberries. The handset will also run the as-of-yet unannounced Blackberry10 OS, which promises a whole new experience for the user.

via Crackberry

Apple’s updated Time Capsule and Airport stations are coming soon

Apple is releasing an updated version of their Time Capsule and Airport Express and Extreme network backup devices. The new models are fully wireless, just like their predecessors, and bring an increase in storage capacity, integration with iCloud, remote access support and a few fixes with the wireless performance that have plagued some of the previous models.

Nikon releases a couple of new semi-professional cameras

Alongside with their new consumer point and shoot cameras, Nikon has also announced the release of a couple of fixed lens, super zoom semiprofessional cameras for photography beginners and enthusiasts who don’t need or want the full power of a true dSLR. The Coolpix P510 sports a 42x optical zoom, wide lens, a 16 megapixels sensor, 921K resolution 3 inch display with a hinge, 1080p video recording support and dual mic array.
The other camera is a cheaper model – the Coolpix L810, which still presents its user with a respectable amount of features, including a 26x wide angle zoom, the same 16 megapixels sensor and 3 inch display as on the P510 (except it’s fixed inside the housing), but only 720p video recording support and a few other restrictions in features. The L810 will cost a nice $280, while the P510 will be more expensive, with the price as of yet unknown.

Spark brings Plasma Active UX Linux OS to the market

There are plenty of Android tablets out there, and for the less tech-savvy, there’s the simple but great iPad, however if you want something truly unique and you’re a Linux fan (or more specifically, KDE fan), the Spark tablet may pique your interest. The affordable tablet will resell for only $270 and it brings the Plasma Active UX OS, which is based on Linux (and more importantly, doesn’t run inside a Java VM like Android) and has a very unique and beautiful interface. The tablet is aimed at developers who want Linux tools on their tablet, and the specs are pretty standard for a budget tablet – there’s a 1 GHz CPU, Mali 400 GPU, 512 MB of RAM and 4 Gb of storage space plus a micro SD card slot for expansion.

Samsung Galaxy S III will be revealed in late May at a separate event

Bolstered by the success of the Galaxy S and S2, Samsung announced that they will be revealing the new Galaxy S3 (yes, it’s coming and it sounds like it will be amazing) in May-June this year, not at the Mobile World Congress next month. An interesting decision, but judging by the rumors and the popularity of the previous two handsets, I’d say that Samsung is right in thinking that their new phone will get a lot of coverage even if it’s launched with its own special event, kind of like the iPhone.

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The Xappr: Laser Gun for Your Phone

Gadget News — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:23:33 +0000

Smartphone owners thrive in all different areas of the world and who can blame them; it seems as though the smartphones can do just about any and everything. However, a smartphone does not typically look like a gun which is where the Xappr comes in handy. With the Xappr, the iPhones and Android will be able to operate much like a laser gun.

The company that is producing the Xappr says that this laser gun accessory will work for iPhones, Androids, and Windows handsets and that it will be available in June. However, those who are interested in pre-ordering the gadget ahead of time can go ahead and do so. The cost of this laser gun will be about $30 and shipping to individuals in the United States will cost nearly $15, totaling about $45.