Rumour: HP set to debut Android tablet and possibly a phone?

Image Credit: TechCrunch.

   The Verge and ReadWrite are reporting that HP is currently ramping up work on a set of Android  devices which could possibly include both tablets and a phone! This could potentially be sad news for WebOS, because it would ultimately end the OS, but it would be a huge boost for Android if it were to materialise!

   ReadWrite were supposedly tipped by two anonymous sources that HP will announce a tablet rocking Nvidia's new Tegra 4 chip, a move which would make sense for both companies as they're both seeking to establish their respective products. This device has supposedly been in the offing since before Thanksgiving of last year. The Verge claim that that is relatively accurate according to their 'source' but no one knows anything about timetables.

   The smartphone rumour is a bit more tenuous though. It essentially hinges on a statement from HP's CEO, Meg Whitman, who said, "we have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that would be your first computing device." However, since then she has gone on record and said that HP 'has no plans' to debut a phone this year and so we should take this rumour with a massive pinch of salt!

   Naturally, these are big rumours and so we urge you to take them with a huge fist-full of salt, but it would make sense for a computing behemoth to offer Android tablets, especially if they're struggling to shift Windows 8 devices! Looks like we'll have to wait and see how this one plays out!

ReadWrite Via TheVerge.

Read More

17/09/2012

Is there a PadFone 2 on the way?

   The Asus PadFone... The phone/tablet mash up that I and numerous other said we'd get because it's such a good idea. The original PadFone was no slouch though; it had the dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset running the show and everything was good if a little mid-range.

    Of the rumours are to be believed then the PadFone 2 should kick things up a notch with the inclusion of a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro. An AnTuTu benchmark result shows a device that’s generally on the level of Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad figures! 

   At the moment we know very little about the whole device apart from the odd bit of speculation. It's been thrown around that we might be seeing 2Gb's of RAM and better resolution screens, but we'll probably have to wait until the start of next year before anything concrete comes out!

   It would be great to see a hugely powerful and genuinely impress device come out of the PadFone project and just like last time I would love to own one!

In other news:

• Cloud storage company Box has announced they are rolling out Box Accelerator. This is a service which has been launched today and it promises 10x faster upload speeds than before. They're able to do this thanks to new network infrastructure that spreads upload hubs across the globe. This has been so efficient in testing that an independent review marks the service as comfortably faster than; Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and Google Drive.

• If you're a Tesco mobile customer then we've got good news for you if you like everything with an 'i' in front of it's name. Tesco has released an 'register your interest page' for the iPhone 5! If you want to show your interest head over here and you might have one in your hands relatively soon!

• Just in case anyone doubted the appeal of Apple's new iPhone 5 then you should see some of these stats! In the first 24 hours of pre-orders the company sold over 2m units. For those of you talented with numbers you'll instantly know that that's more than 23 units a second or 1,389 a minute, that's why the delivery time slipped after a while ladies and gentlemen! That also reinforces AT&T's statement which said it was their most successful iPhone launch ever!

• Amazon has quietly outed a maps API to compete with Google's solution. The API was sneeked out during the companies Kindle Fire HD release and it's looking like a year of Google Maps challengers. Now you've got Bing maps, iOS maps, Amazon apps, but there's still a place in our heart for Ordance Survey maps!

• Smartphones and tablets have officially overtaken PCs as major consumer of DRAM chips.

• Microsoft have confirmed the price range for their Surface tablets; they will be anywhere from $300-$700 depending on whether you opt for a RT version or full Windows experience!

And finally, is the a new upcoming smartphone from HP running... Android?!?! This is relatively easy to fake by the way, but after last weeks announcement HP is getting back in the game it could be a very well placed teaser! As you can see there's ICS at the moment and a nice little lovely 1366 x 720 pixel resolution display with 1.5GHz on each of its Snapdragon CPU cores. So what do you think? Real or fake?

Read More