Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 announced.
Today Samsung outed a decidedly mid-range tablet, the Galaxy Tab 2, finally offering an 'upgrade' to the world's first Android tab. The Tab 2 retains the 7" inch form factor and will run Android 4.0 on that 1024x600 screen. The tablet will feature a 1Ghz dualcore processor of an unspecified variety, which is twinned with 1GB of RAM. On top of this the slate will have two cameras, both slightly disappointing, the front facing camera has a VGA sensor and the rearing facing camera has a 3MP sensor, again reinforcing the mid-range specs of the device. Samsung has announced you will have a choice of 3G and Wifi varients and all of this will become available in March in the UK and around the world later. That is if you don't want either the 7.7", 8.9" or 10.1" tabs that are already available.
The EU approves Googlerola.
Motoroogle or Motogoo or whatever you fancy calling 'it', 'it' is one step to becoming officially recognised worldwide, because today the EU joined the American DOJ in approving the merger. Jaoquin Almunia, from the European Commission, stated that the deal was approved because it 'does not itself raise competition issues'. Now it's just China, Taiwan and Israel are left to convince.
HTC leaks continue.
Yesterday there was the incredible-esque leak and today a ROM for the yet-unannounced Endeavour handset has revealed part of its spec sheet. And HTC really has followed through on it's promise to make phones with better specs. The ROM has revealed a 1280x720p 4.7" screen, a quad-core Tegra 3 processor supposedly clocked at 1.5Ghz and 8MP rear-facing camera and a front facing camera but we don't know the quality of that shooter yet. There's also meant to be Beats Audio, NFC and 1GB of RAM and all of this pushing a Sense 4.0 version and Ice Cream Sandwich. Hopefully HTC can conjure up a beautiful handset to go with the specs.
Iran cracks down on internet freedom.
Iran has been filtering the internet for years but in the last month it has gone considerably further. Bloomberg has today confirmed that since February the 10th Google's encrypted search, email, YouTube have joined Microsoft's Hotmail in the banned pile. There is, at the moment, no indication that this ban will ever be lifted which is a terrible shame.
Sony considering the Vita OS for Smartphones.
Today Sony has announced that the overwhelmingly positive views of the PS Vita's OS has led them to consider it for Smartphone release. Sony has been talking about a fully-integrated solution lately and this would obviously be a key part of this, although for the moment they're sticking with Android too. Sony exec, Mr Matsumoto announced;
“[Translated:] We considered room for development in various directions including OS for smartphones from the beginning. For gaming consoles, the best hardware only must be considered to elicit top performance – but because we wanted the operating system to be scalable, we built this system from scratch with communication functions on mobile telephone networks from the outset. The touchscreen interface elements do not correspond exactly with a smartphone or tablet at the moment, but scalability makes it a possibility in the future.” – Matsumoto.
