10/10/2012

Galaxy S3 Mini details leaked?!

   The immanent release of the new Samsung 'Galaxy S3 mini' has had people excited about the possibilities of the Galaxy S3's power and a more manageable 4" form factor. But, the guys over at MobileGeeks may have got some information which could scupper your purchasing plans!   

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28/08/2012

LG Optimus G becomes official!!!

   LG have been in the shadow of their South Korean rivals, Samsung, for far too long! The Optimus G might finally be the company's way out of that darkness! 

   For starters there is an insane spec sheet on this thing; there's a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 running the show, 4G LTE connectivity, and LG’s futuristic application of their fully integrated touch technology that goes by the name of in-cell touch, which is the same technology Apple is expected to use in the upcoming iPhone. 

   On top of that you've got a True HD (1280 x 768 pixel resolution) IPS+ LCD and LG claims it'll be able to squeeze right up to the edge of the 3mm bezel! On the back of the device you’ll find a massive 13 megapixel camera, to compliment the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera. The other info includes; 2GBs of RAM, a 2100MaH battery and Android 4.0 ICS!

   This is one sleek (8.45mm thick), ultra-powerful device, hopefully LG will be able to keep this one up to date on the software front!

In other news:

• Last week we reported that OnLive would be keeping their CEO, Steve Perlman, for the foreseeable future. But, it seems this week Mr. Perlman has been dismissed and the official statement from OnLive on Perlman leaving is that he is “departing to work on his myriad of other projects.” Perlman likely took his own financial beating with OnLive having to restructure.
  
  The Verge has said that while Perlman was the majority shareholder in OnLive; all his stock was wiped out when the company turned insolvent. The company used something called an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, and this took off all stock in the company. Reports from insiders claim that the reason Perlman left was that his employees asked for his permanent resignation before they would even consider working for the new company. Ouch!

• Sony's PS Vita is getting a firmware update to version 1.8. If you're a European reader this will bring you the option to play all PSone Classics, but the update is bitter-sweet if you live in the USA as only the following games are available to begin with;with more games cropping up each week in the USA.
  
  "Arc the Lad, Cool Boarders 2, Final Fantasy VII, Hot Shots Golf 2, Jet Moto, Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, Twisted Metal 2, Wild Arms."

• Apple has pushed for the ban of 8 Samsung devices after last weeks bombshell. The devices include; the Galaxy S 4G, AT&T Galaxy S II (AT&T), Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, T-Mobile Galaxy S II, Galaxy S2 II Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge, Galaxy Prevail.
  
  Thankfully most of these devices probably won't interest you but just in case they do get out there and get one ASAP before they get banned!

And finally, Engadget has got hold of a new picture and some specs for an upcoming version of the Droid Razr called the Motorola Droid Razr M 4G LTE. The only changes from the original version are Gorilla Glass 2 is added as well as a beefed up 3MP front-facing camera. Sorry it's not a Razr HD guys!

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24/08/2012

OnLive CEO stays on amid cuts!

  Last week half of OnLive’s workforce was laid off, the company began a huge restructuring programme because they were haemorrhaging money. The changes meant that HTC lost its $40 million investment. When things like this happen and everything looks so dire everyone and their mum would expect to see the CEO and the execs move on to be replaced with people with new ideas and a fresh plan for success. So it won't be just us who're very surprised that OnLive is keeping their current CEO, Steve Perlman.

   An official statement was issued by OnLive this week which offered up a few more details on what’s actually happening within the company and what fans can expect to be seeing from the company. OnLive said in the statement that it has a new investor and assured subscribers that all their purchases, achievements, videos, and other content were still there and would not be interrupted. The company says it plans to continue operating its service 24/7 just as it always has.

   Perlman has been charged with working through this major transition. Once the company transition is complete, OnLive said that Pearlman would focus on the company’s next product releases and promised more major announcements in the near future. Those announcements will include the Vizio CoStar and the Ouya console! Stay tuned for more announcements as they happen!

South Korean judgement on Apple Vs. Samsung.

   So these two have been at each others throat for soooo long it's starting to get boring but now the results are finally starting to come in.

   The first result has come out of South Korea, Samsung's home turf, so is this ruling slightly favourable? Not entirely no. The court decided that Apple had infringed on two Samsung patents, but Samsung had returned the favor on Apple's "bounceback" design patent, but they apparently didn't copy Apple's icon design resulting in damages of about $22,000 heading Apple's way and $35,000 going the other way. That's according to WSJ's Evan Ramstad, who also reports that other than the light financial slap on the wrist, the ruling means that the infringing products can no longer be sold in South Korea. The list of affected hardware includes mostly previous gen products like the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, as well as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy S II and Galaxy Nexus.

   The USA might rule slightly more in Apple's favour but, we'll find out later next week!

In other news:

• HTC's rumoured 'Proto' device has had some more leaks today. The device is widely expected to replace the HTC One V when it launches soon!

• Tim Cook has been CEO of Apple for a year! 

• There is a planned Xbox 360 hub for the upcoming US election campaign!

And finally for those of you who thinks Apple needs to commit a 4G chip to their upcoming iPhone then it would seem consumers don't really see the need at the moment. All the good stats from the research are below!

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20/08/2012

Jolla to introduce Android app compatibility and some more news on their phone!

   We've covered Jolla mobile quite a few times here on TheTechFella and regular readers will know that the company are in the middle of creating a MeeGo powered phone. One of the fundamental problems with MeeGo or any new OS, is that there is a severe lack of apps. Apps recently have become one of the key selling points to any phone buyer.

   Jolla seems to appreciate this and, according to ArcticStartup, the company plans to utilize Android's app ecosystem to ensure there is a lot of apps for their future buyers. This information comes from a recent interview between Jussi Hurmola, the CEO of Jolla and Tero Lehto from Finnish 3T publication, where the latter asked the former how he plans to tackle the problem of building an app ecosystem for a phone. Hurmola reportedly said he plans to use Android apps (but he didn't want to officially announce that yet) as well as Qt and HTML5-applications all through OpenMobile's ACL (application compatibility layer). 

   Hurmola also promised a new UI which is 'more modern' than both Android's and iOS' so if they can live up to that then they may have a challenger on their hands! Another tasty little tidbit was that the device will have a screen larger than 3.5" so everything is sounding promising at the moment!

   Given the huge support MeeGo generated when Nokia announced their N9, Jolla may well have a chance. But, it'll be interesting to see what their device looks like when it gets announced later this autumn, that device will literally make or break this company!

In other news:

• As part of the restructuring of OnLive, the streaming gaming provider has laid off half of their workforce and OnLive all of tyheir their assets will now become part of 'a newly-formed company'. This will mean that HTC's infrequently mentioned $40 million investment will be lost and that'll be another round of bad news for the companies accountants!

• 500,000 Android users in China have been infected with a malware called SMSZombie. Thankfully for those of us outside of China this isn't too big of an issue because the malware exploits a vulnerability in China Mobile's payment systems so it shouldn't affect people in other parts of the world!

• Apple and Samsung have almost finished testifying in their cases and the jury is poised to start deliberating, but the pair were given one last chance to talk it out. Guess what! There was no agreement so far, but Bloomberg believes that the CEOs of both companies, Tim Cook and Kwon Oh Hyun, will hold a telephone conference call to see if any resolution can be agreed before we give full power to the jury. 

•  LG's Optimus Vu will soon be heading outside of Japan and South Korean and will land in the USA and 'select countries' in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. The 'phablet' will be refreshed with a Quad-core Tegra 3 processor for most people but the US version will have a 1.5Ghz Snapdragon S4 processor. All we know about availability or pricing is that these will be ready for September!

• Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 10.1 has been taken apart by iFixit and they've decided that should anything go wrong with the device it'll be nice and easy to repair! Unlike the new Retina Macbooks and the latest iPad, both of which iFixit criticised for the low likelihood of a successful repair.

• Netflix has been on a recent world wide march lately as they've rolled out there service throughout some Western parts of Europe and announce Scandinavian availability is coming soon. And it seems that this is coming good for the company because they've announced today that they have already managed to rack up a million subscibers throughout the UK and Ireland! Not bad going!

• On a similar theme Barnes and Noble have announced that they too will be bringing their lines of eReaders and content to the UK starting from this autumn. Their address will be nook.com.uk if and when they get their storefront up and running!

• And finally, the Galaxy S3-esque device pictured below is supposedly te upcoming Galaxy player and a full list of specs is available on the picture below! And hopefully the device will make an appearance at IFA in a couple of weeks!

 

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30/05/2012

Benchmark again hints at a Nexus tablet.

   Early this morning the news broke that someone somewhere had noticed a listing on Rightware's Power Board benchmarking test. In 11th place was sitting a device under the name 'Nexus 7', which does appear to confirm rumours Google is creating a 7" device.

   The listing also gives some hints about the rest of the specs inside this device; we have a quad-core Tegra3 processor, a 720p HD screen and it's supposedly running a software build named JRN51B which we expect is a build of Android 4.1 and more specifically this could be a Jelly Bean flavored build of Android.

   With the device being tested daily by someone it looks like we might not have too long to wait!

Sony releases 2 new 'lifeproof' devices.

Xperia Go.

   The first of these two devices is the Xperia Go and as the name suggests it'll be prepare for most of what you throw at it. The device will arrive in the United States as the Xperia advance and it's the smaller of the two, with a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 display, 1GHz dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel camera. The good stuff however, starts here, the device be used when your fingers are wet, something most touchscreens definitely can't do, it meets the IP67 dust and water resistance standard, which is better than most ruggedized phones manage! Unfortunately, it also runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread out of the box, though Sony says there’s an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in the pipeline, strange that they can't do ICS straight from the off.

   All of this comes along with 8GB of internal storage, USB Host support, a 1265mAh built-in battery and a microSD card slot. Twinned with 512MB of RAM and either triband or dualband UMTS/HSPA depending on where you reside. Sony will kindly give you 50GB of Box cloud storage if you choose to take the plunge before the end of the year; the Xperia Go is slated to hit shelves in three colours; black, white and yellow in Q3 2012.

Xperia Acro S.

   The second device is essentially the Xperia S in disguise, complete with a similar or probably the samet 4.3-inches (1280 x 720) screen which is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core and a 12-megapixel camera that Sony claims is ready to shoot in under a second.

   The device is also PlayStation Certified and has 1080p HD video recording (although it's 720p from the front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera) and Ice Cream Sandwich is available from launch (woo!). Sony’s got some special camera tech on show here in the Exmor R variety, whatever that does?! You've got your usual assortment of HDMI, GPS, GLONASS, NFC and USB. Finally, it has a non-removanle 1910mAh battery pack and it has quadband HSPA+ connectivity.  It will be available in black, white and pink in Q3 2012.

In other news:

• It has been rumoured that Sony are looking to acquire a cloud gaming service, such as OnLive and Gaikai in a bid to increase their gaming prowess in the mobile world.
• Microsoft has started being a bit cleverer with it's newly acquired Skype, offering it to Manufacturers for preinstallation.
• Twitter is planning to improve the performance of it's site, so we all get Tweeting even faster.
• The Nokia Lumia 610 has officially launched in the UK and we have an exact figure on how many app WONT work on it and the exact percentage is 1.6% of Windows Phone apps, so actually quite a lot, bad times.
• Apple has been pushing manufacturing in the USA this week at All Things D!
• They've also reaffirmed that they won't be making any Transformer-esque devices any time soon.
• Verizon's Galaxy Nexus is expected to be getting its build of Android 4.0.4 very soon!!!

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