Desiibond's Newsroll

Android, iOS gain marketshare, Gingerbread is top android version

2012-02-03T16:28:00.001+05:30

Thanks to iPhone 4S's stellar sale, Apple has pushed LG to no.4 spot and is the third biggest Mobile Phone Vendor (sales for the year 2011 taken into account). Yes, with only three smartphones in the arsenal (iPhone 3GS, iPhone4 and iPhone 4S), Apple has taken the third spot from a brand that makes a plethora of smarpthones and features phones.

TopFive Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share Calendar Year 2011(Units in Millions)

Vendor	2011 Unit Shipments	2011 Market Share	2010 Unit Shipments	2010 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Nokia	417.1	27.0%	453.0	32.6%	-7.9%
Samsung	329.4	21.3%	280.2	20.1%	17.6%
Apple	93.2	6.0%	47.5	3.4%	96.2%
LGElectronics	88.1	5.7%	116.7	8.4%	-24.5%
ZTE	66.1	4.3%	50.5	3.6%	30.9%
Others	552.1	35.7%	443.6	31.9%	24.5%
Total	1,546.0	100.0%	1,391.5	100.0%	11.1%

"Feature phones accounted for a majority of shipments from fourof the five market leaders during the quarter," said Ramon Llamas,senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends team."Even though their proportion is eroding, feature phones maintain theirappeal on the basis of price and ease of use.
"Atthe same time, feature phones are fighting to maintain their market share,"added Llamas. "To meet the challenge, feature phones are becoming more likesmartphones, incorporating mobile Internet and third-party applications. Whilethis may not stem the smartphone tide, it should slow down the rate at whichsmartphones are selected over feature phones."

Among Android versions, Gingerbread finally took heavy lead, 58.6% of Android smartphones now running this version while Froyo remained in second place with 27.8% of share

Below chart shows how Android versions fared over the last year

Motorola wins trial against Apple, iCloud banned in Germany (possibly in Europe too)

2012-02-03T15:25:00.000+05:30

It looks like Apple's patent war is getting worse. While many of its appeals against Android devices were struck down by many courts across Europe, Judge Andreas Voss of Mannheim Regional Court has ruled a permanent injunction against Apple (filed by Motorola last April) and banned Apple iCloud and any devices that make use of iCloud in Germany as this service violates patent EP (European Patent) 0847654 (B1) on a "multiple pager status synchronization system and method". This is a permanent injunction that is delivered at the end of a full proceeding. Apple can chose to appeal the decision. Hit the source button to get more information on the same

Source

Forbes says iOS apps crash more than Android apps, we thank iOS 5.x.x

2012-02-03T13:25:00.001+05:30

This is a surprise for us. For a long time, we have been thinking that Android apps crash lot more than iOS apps. Well, the recent research by Crittercism revealed that iOS apps now crash more than Android's and from the above piechart, it's pretty obvious why this is happening. I wish that this study was done with latest versions of iOS and Android taken out of equation. Then again the combined amount of crashes on iOS 4.2.10, 5.0, 4.1, 5.0.1, 4.3.5, 4.3.3 account for 70% of total app crashes (iOS and Android combined).

The above two charges confirm the general idea that the latest versions causes most amount of app crashes.

Crittercism analyzed a total of more than 214 million app launches from November and December 2011 from apps that use its service. For full report, read this Forbes article.

New HTC Sensation with ICS releasing on 1st of March

2012-02-03T11:42:00.001+05:30

HTC Sensation, the flagship Android device will be coming with ICS preinstalled in Netherlands from March 1st and it will be available in new colors, as per HTC press release.

Windows Phone gets official Vimeo app

2012-02-03T10:59:00.001+05:30

If you are scratching your head thinking what this Vimeo is a video sharing website (yes, like youtube) where users can upload, share and view videos. Vimeo has released an official app for Windows Phone users (yes, like youtube app for android) with the following features:


Featured videos

Quick Search

Watch and manage all your existing Vimeo videos, watch videos from your Vimeo inbox, Watch Later queue, or videos you have liked 

Easily like, comment on, and add videos to your Watch Later queue 

Easily upload your footage in HD, Pause and resume uploads 

Replace existing videos

Edit titles, descriptions, tags, privacy settings, and credits 

Share to social networks, share via email and SMS

Group your videos, add to channels and albums

Get stats on plays, likes, and comments

Nokia Lumia 900 available for pre-order

2012-02-02T16:51:00.002+05:30

Pay 25$ as token advance at nearby Microsoft Store and you will be the among the first to get Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone 7.5 smartphone. Once the device is released, you will be asked to pay the remaining amoung (it is rumored that this phone will launch with a price tag of 99$ with 2 year contract). Given the amount of positive reviews that this smarpthone got during CES from leading technology bloggers, it should be worth pre-ordering this device. For a list of Microsoft Stores, check herehttp://content.microsoftstore.com/home.aspx

Source

Verizon Droid 4 is now official

2012-02-02T16:26:00.001+05:30

Guess what, this new device looks damn sexy. The specs first:

Dual Core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB LP-DDR2 RAM, 16GB
4" qHD display
5 row qwerty keypad with edge lit keys
Android 2.3.5
1785mAh battery
4G LTE
8mp rear camera with 1080p video recording. 720p capable front facing camera
Water-repellent nano coating

There is not much info on when this device will be available or what the price is. There is an opiton to register to get more information.

n00bs at work. Windows XP and IE6 marketshare rises

2012-02-02T12:08:00.000+05:30

Look at the above images and try not to curse loudly. Yes, for some unknown reasons, market share of IE6 and Windows XP went up just a bit in January. The marketshare of IE went up to 8.38 percent (according to arstechnica) in January (from 7.66%) while Windows XP's marketshare went up to 47.19% from 46.52% (as per Cnet).
Another big surprise is that IE ate into Chrome and Firefox desktop browser marketshare in January and this is the first time that Chrome's marketshare went down (since its release). Safari maintainted its lead in mobile browser marketshare while Opera Mini's share is sliding fast (might go below Android native browser's share by end of February).

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US maintains the lead in number of twitter accounts, India ranked 6th

2012-02-02T11:52:00.001+05:30

This is interesting. Brazil, the country that has been a stronghold of Orkut has 2nd most number of twitter accounts, surpassing Japan. India, on the other hand is at 6th place with more than 10 million twitter accounts. When it comes to number of active accounts though, India is well below the global average. Only 19% of those accounts are currently active while Dutch are the best with 33% of them keeping the account active.

Source

U.S. Cellular goes LTE

2012-02-02T11:43:00.001+05:30

U.S. Cellular has announced that their 4G LTE network will be active starting next month and wil cover 25% of its customer base. Along with this announcement, U.S. Cellular is launching two new Android devices that support 4G LTE.

Samsung Galaxy S Aviator

Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread)
4.3" WVGA s-AMOLED plus touchscreen
8MP rear-camera
Front-facing webcam
HDMI port

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Android 3.2 (Honeycomb)
10.1" WXGA TFT touchscreen
HD gaming capabilities
Front-facing webcam
Adobe® Flash® support

"With 4G LTE speeds, you can quickly get what you want when you need it," said Mary N. Dillon, president and CEO of U.S. Cellular. "This 4G LTE network builds upon our industry-leading network satisfaction and is the only one that comes with a valuable rewards program and other unique benefits like Overage Protection and Battery Swap that make our customers the happiest in wireless."

Source

Google Docs app for Android updated, access docs offline now

2012-02-02T11:39:00.000+05:30

If you are using Google Docs application on your tablet/smartphone, you better update it now as the new version will allow you access the doc/file even when you are not connected to internet. Changelog:

Make any file available offline for view access while not connected.
Manage offline content, including seeing what’s out of date.
Automatic syncing of offline content while on wifi.
Star and rename files while offline.
Improved reading experience of Google documents while on a tablet.

If you haven't used Google Docs application yet, give it a try. This is the link to apps Android market page.

Samsung Infuse 4G gets Gingerbread, finally!

2012-02-02T11:33:00.002+05:30

Atlast, users of AT&T Infuse 4G get to taste Gingerbread. AT&T has started rolling out 2.3 update to Infuse 4G devices. The following is changelog as per AT&T:

Improved Copy and Paste functionality
•             Redesigned Multi Touch Software Keyboard
•             Download manager for long running HTTP downloads
•             Improved power management and application control
•             Notification Shade: “Flight Mode” added (“Silent” removed)
•             New Fonts options added include Choco Cooky, Cool Jazz, Rosemary
•             Keyboard Changes: Android Keyboard with Wider Spaced keys and Quick Keys at the top
•             New Widgets: The name of the content provider will be listed on the widget list along with the widget name. Previously only the widget name was provided.
•             New Widget: Traffic (Android) added to list of available widgets
•             Menu Changes/New Apps: Downloads and Google Books added new, Promotional pre-load of Angry Birds removed*

Do note that Angry Birds that came preloaded with this phone will be removed and need to be downloaded again from Android market.

Source

NSN announces fresh round of headcount reduction

2012-02-02T11:23:00.001+05:30

2,900 jobs in Germany and 1,200 employees in Finland will be out of NSN as part of restructing process that had started a while ago to cut down costs. Nokia will be saving around a billion euros.

Source

Mozilla Firefox 10 available for download, new developer tools added

2012-02-01T23:10:00.001+05:30

Just days after Mozilla released beta version of Firefox 10, they spat out public stable version and is available for download at Firefox.com. First there is a huge list of bug fixes. By huge, we mean really really huge. We cannot list entire list here but head to this page. Following is the list of changes in this version:

Forward button hidden when there is no forward page
Better add-on compatibility. Default add-on setting will be 'compatible' unless it is set as 'incompatible'
Anti-aliasing for WebGL
CSS 3D-Transforms
New element for bi-directional text isolation, along with supporting CSS properties.
Full Screen APIs allow you to build a web application that runs full screen

Head here for developer changes and 'known issues'.

The following video explains Web Developer Tools now available for Firefox

Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter released

2012-02-01T22:59:00.001+05:30

If you are using a Seagate GoFlex series HDD and are craving for more speed, there is good news from Seagate. Seagate has updated their accessories page with new Thunderbolt GoFlex adapter. Rated 20x faster than USB 2.0, this adapter can provide transfer speeds upto 10Gb/s and will work with any GoFlex drive. Downside is that it costs whopping 100$ (price for which you can purchase more than one external HDD).

Mac OS X gets ZFS

2012-02-01T22:54:00.001+05:30

ZFS is file system cum volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems is one of the best file systems avaliable for modern day operating systems that achieves high data integrity. User of Linux and Solaris have been enjoying the benefits of this FS for a long time and now, thanks to Don Brady (former Apple engineer), OS X users can give this a try. Brady's own company Ten's Complement has released a tool named ZEVO Silver Edition that will support ZFS and costs $19.95. You can find more infomation on this tool here.

Kinect for Windows now shipping to consumers

2012-02-01T22:43:00.000+05:30

PC users can now stop envied by Xbox 360 users. Microsoft has started shipping Kinect for Windows to buyers. Priced at $249, this device is compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you are a developer, you can now download the SDK which is now out of beta (version 1.0 is out now). You can purchase this from Amazon or Microsoft Store now.

Instructions to unlock bootloader of Motorola Razr Dev edition and Xoom published

2012-01-31T13:42:00.003+05:30

The following steps are published by Motorola on their developer website to help you unlock the booloader of Motorola Razr developer edition and Xooom.

Agree to the terms and conditions as outlined in the Motorola Unlockable Bootloader Legal Agreement.
Take full backup and make sure the device's battery is fully charged
Install the Android SDK on your computer.
Power off your device, while holding the volume down button, press the power button for about 1 second and release the power button. Once you get AP Flashboot Flash mode, release the volume down button.
Connect your device to PC and install Motorola Device Drivers.
Run 'fastboot oem unlock' from your PC's command line interface to activate the unlocking process.
On your device, scroll down through the warning by using the volume DOWN button. Highlight ‘unlock’ using the volume DOWN key. Select ‘unlock’ (or ‘cancel’) using the volume UP key. The device will reboot, rebuild, and return to the fastboot screen. The fastboot screen will display the device as unlocked.

In case you get the warning '(bootloader) fastboot oem unlock disabled!', your device is not eligible for bootloader unlock.

Source

RIM and Microsoft launch Blackberry Business Cloud services

2012-01-30T21:57:00.004+05:30

Blackberry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 to be precise. Following are key features of these collaborative services:

Access device management features in the cloud
Support BBM and other IM apps
Provide wireless messaging capabilities
Activate, sync and backup smartphones wirelessly
Secure sensitive information

If you have already subscribed for Office 365 services, this new service is available at no extra cost and links MS Exchange Online with Blackberry smartphones to sync email, calendar, contacts etc.

You can sign up here to trial or subscribe Office 365 and this service.

Feature and technical overview PDF
Source1
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MSN Visualizer, innovative HTML5 based music player

2012-01-30T19:42:00.002+05:30

Open the website from here

Select a song and let it buffer as the relevant image loads

Enjoy the song as it plays in the browser

This is a new innovative web based player designed by Hinderling Volkart AG and this is what they say:

VISUALIZER BY MSN PLAYS 47 SONGS AND SHOWS MILLIONS OF PICTURES. THE LYRICS WITH A TOTAL OF OVER 11'000 WORDS EXPLORE FLICKR AS TAGS FOR IMAGES, THE DYNAMIC SELECTION WITHIN THE SEARCH RESULTS HAPPENS RANDOMLY. EACH TIME A SONG IS BEING PLAYED, VISUALIZER BY MSN CREATES A COMPLETELY NEW AND UNIQUE VIDEO CLIP. ENJOY IT AND USE IT: WRITE YOUR OWN WORDS, PLAY IT WITH A RANDOM SONG AND SEND THE SOUNDING MESSAGE TO YOUR FRIENDS. IT'S GREAT, IT'S FUN, IT'S HIGHLY PERSONAL.

Awesome ain't it? Why don't you give it a try. Do note that it only works in IE 9 and latest versions of Chrome/Safari.

Nokia Lumia heading 'Down Under'

2012-01-30T19:28:00.003+05:30

Lumia 800, the first Windows Phone device from Nokia will be avialable in Australia in March. This amazing smartphone will be available in Cyan, Magenta, Black and White colors. Exact launch date is not yet announced but you can register at Telstra's site to get more info on this.

Nokia Australia’s managing director, Chris Carr, said, “Nokia Lumia will change the way people think about Nokia. It signifies a new beginning for the company, bringing together the very best of Nokia’s handset design and services with the latest Windows Phone software.
“Interest locally for Nokia Lumia, our first range of Nokia with Windows Phone devices, has been extremely positive, with a significant appetite from operators and retailers looking to offer consumers a real smartphone alternative.
“With uptake from all Australian operators and major retailers, the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800 signals our intent to regain leadership in smartphone design and usability,” Carr said.

Source

Motorola announces Razr developer edition, comes with unlocked bootloader

2012-01-30T19:11:00.000+05:30

Yes. A Razr with unlocked bootloader. Motorola will soon start pre-orders for this hot droid through their developer channel MOTODEV. The device will be available in USA while European devs can purchase it from Motorola Shop. There is no pricing detail nor release dates as of today.

Source

Spark linux tablet announced, to have KDE Plasma Active UI

2012-01-30T18:50:00.001+05:30

7" touch display
1GHz AMLogic ARM processor, Mali-400 GPU, 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage
Priced at 200 euros
KDE Plasma Active interface

There is no video showcasing the OS or the tablet and there is no detail on when this tablet will be ready for shipping. The developer has not opened pre-orders. Lets just wait and see if and when this intersting tablet will see daylight.

Source

DoubleTwist app updated, gets podcast support

2012-01-30T17:51:00.000+05:30

DoubleTwist, the popular music sync/playback app has got a new feature, Podcasts. Updates in new version are:

Podcasts: experience podcasts without syncing! (premium feature available in paid version)
Added expandable/collapsable Now Playing screen with easier access to Up Next queue.
Design and interface updates -- many for Android 4.0.
Fixed AirPlay & AirTwist playback issues.
Improved app performance & reliability.

So, go ahead and purchase this awesome android music player.

Samsung announces Galaxy S Advance dual core smartphone

2012-01-30T17:11:00.002+05:30

The specs first:

1GHz dual core processor, 768MB of RAM, 16GB internal storage
4" SuperAMOLED
5mp rear camera, 1.3mp front facing camera
Android 2.3 Gingerbread

There is no mention about release date or pricing. Below is the press release from Samsung:

Latest addition to Android-powered GALAXY portfolio delivers sleek curved design with Dual Core performance
SEOUL, Korea – January 30, 2012 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the launch of the Samsung GALAXY S Advance. Designed for those who define themselves by the phone they carry, the GALAXY S Advance strikes a balance of style, power and performance. It will be available in Russia starting from February, and then be gradually rolled out in CIS, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America and China.
"The GALAXY S Advance adds to the successful track record of the GALAXY smartphone range with a phone that combines power and style with all the versatility of Samsung's Hub services," said JK Shin, President of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.
Dual Core performance, curved design and Super AMOLED display
Powered by a dual core 1.0 GHz processor and HSPA 14.4 Mbps connectivity, the GALAXY S Advance has been built with power and connectivity in mind, delivering great versatility and a highly responsive user interface for easy multitasking. Application start-ups are faster with virtually no lag time, and the user experience is boosted with smoother screen transitions, faster image processing, and enhanced Web download and browsing performance.
The GALAXY S Advance's curved glass design enhances handling of the phone and fits the user's facial form easily and naturally. Its 4.0" Super AMOLED display provides the stunning visuals users have come to expect of Samsung GALAXY smartphones, offering unparalleled color reproduction and ensuring that photos and videos captured with the device's 5MP camera can be enjoyed with vivid clarity.
The Samsung user experience
Running on Android Gingerbread and featuring Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, the GALAXY S Advance enables users to stay connected through the Samsung Hubs and ChatON services. Music Hub offers a full music store experience with access to over 11 million tracks and the ability to fully personalize users' own music catalogues. Readers Hub offers access to over 2.3 million e-books, 3,500 magazine and 200 newspaper titles; while the hugely popular Game Hub offers access to thousands of catalogued games supplemented by gamer news feeds and news.
Samsung's cross platform communication service, ChatON connects all phone users into a single community using phone numbers instead of usernames and passwords, provides aneasy instant messaging, group chatting and sharing of content in multiple formats-images, video, voice, contacts, calendar-to make messaging simpler and more intuitive than ever.
The GALAXY S Advance also features Find My Mobile, a unique lost-phone management system that ensures secure phone data encryption in case of phone loss, and that enables users to trace their lost phone directly via the Web or even delete the device's data remotely.

We hope that this new smartphone is launched with price tag under 20k INR.

Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000 gets CM9, time to eat Icecream Sandwich

2012-01-28T18:38:00.001+05:30

It’s time for those using ancient version of Android on first Galaxy Tab P1000 to taste something new, something interesting. Thanks to Team Cyanogen, ICS ROM is now available for Galaxy Tab P1000.

Working:

RIL ( as in phone calls/messaging ) [Broken in latest build]
Mobile Data (2G/3G) [Broken in latest build]
Audio
GPS!
Orientation sensor (although it's a bit slower than usual)
SD(s)
Wifi!
Data usage statistics
Bluetooth
Gyro, light sensors
even more...

Not Working

Camera

Head here to get help on installing and using this ROM.

Ubuntu Introduces HUD, future of menu

2012-01-28T16:55:00.001+05:30

If you were in awe when you first saw GNOME 3 or KDE Plasma Desktop, have a look at this!

If you are feeling desperate to try this out, you need to have Ubuntu 12.04, add ppa:unity-team/hud PPA to software source and run update.

Heads Up Display (HUD) is what Mark Shuttleworth calls this new menu mechanism. And no, it’s not going to replace existing menus. Imagine HUD as this. You are working on a document and you want to print the document. Instead of clicking on nested menus to print, you just need to type ‘print’ and you get the options for print. And the results are displayed dynamically as you type (known as look-ahead-search). In short, you type what you want and the right menu options are displayed on your screen. The more you use HUD the better the filter will be, thanks to ‘fuzzy matching’ technique.

“We’ll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04, in the app and in the panel. In the past few releases of Ubuntu, we’ve actively diminished the visual presence of menus in anticipation of this landing. That proved controversial. In our defence, in user testing, every user finds the menu in the panel, every time, and it’s obviously a cleaner presentation of the interface. But hiding the menu before we had the replacement was overly aggressive. If the HUD lands in 12.04 LTS, we hope you’ll find yourself using the menu less and less, and be glad to have it hidden when you are not using it. You’ll definitely have that option, alongside more traditional menu styles.” said Mark Shuttleworth in his blog.

For complete detail on this, read this blogpost by Mark. Also check these blogs by Ted Gould, Olli Ries and Gord Allott.

Google to supply 27,000 Chromebooks for schools in USA

2012-01-28T14:13:00.001+05:30

Rajen Sheth (Head of Chromebook work for business and education) has announced that Google will supply 27,000 chromebooks to schools in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina states of USA. Rajen has also announced that hundreds of schools across 41 states have atleast one classroom fitted with chromebooks.

"This is the right device for student learning," said Bryan Weinert, technology coordinator for the Leyden Community High School District in Illinois. "We plan to deploy 3,500 to students next year. Every single student will be issued a Chromebook they can use at school and at home."

This is the first major sale of Chromebooks to educational institutions in USA, with 19,000 chromebooks going to Richland School District Two in South Carolina.

Dolphin Browser HD gets Skitch and Evernote plugins

2012-01-28T14:03:00.001+05:30

If you are one of those who love using Dolphin browser, here are two reasons to love it more. If you are one of those who never used Dolphin browser, then better try it now.

MoboTap has partnered with Evernote to provide Evernote and Skitch add-ons to Dolphin Browser HD. Evernote add-on lets you clip the text from a webpage and save it as a note in your evernote account. You can get the add-on from here.

Using the Skitch add-on for Dolphin HD, you can grab the web content you are viewing and annotate it on the fly without the need to take a screenshot of the screen and then copying it to Skitch app. You can also draw on-screen captures and images and share them with your friends. You can download Skitch add-on from here

Nokia top global handset maker in 2011

2012-01-28T13:42:00.001+05:30

Everyone expected Samsung to take the top spot from Nokia this year but it looks like it will take another year atleast (if and only if Nokia doesn’t gain momentum with Lumia devices). It looks like Nokia’s efforts in budget and feature phone segments is paying off. With Nokia bombarding budget segment with S40 devices and Lumia series finally gaining some ground, it will be interesting to see whether Nokia will gain that undisputed no.1 status (in smartphone marketshare and handset marketshare) again.

Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “Nokia’s global handset shipments declined 8 percent annually to 113.5 million units in Q4 2011. Volumes were buoyed by the sales of Nokia’s low-end dual-SIM models in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, but were a little soft overall, as initial shipments of Microsoft Lumia phones could not offset declining Symbian sales. Hot on Nokia’s heels, second-ranked Samsung captured 21 percent share with shipments of 95.0 million units. Samsung’s 18 percent annual growth was fuelled by robust shipments of its broad Galaxy-branded 3G portfolio, headlined by the Galaxy S2 superphone.”

Samsung’s marketshare grew by half a percent, thanks to the lack of penetration in feature phone and budget phone segment while Apple nearly doubled it’s marketshare from 3.5% to 6%.

Source

Kindle Fire sets Galaxy Tab’s tail on fire, ready to set iPad’s tail on fire

2012-01-28T13:20:00.001+05:30

It has been a year and a half since the first Samsung Galaxy Tab came into the market and even today, it has struggled to compete with Apple. We felt that having poor content is the main reason for this lack of market penetration. When Amazon released Kindle Fire, we felt that this is exactly what ‘Team Android’ needed to compete with Apple. And it looks to be true. As per ‘Strategy Analytics’, Kindle Fire has helped Android triple the sales numbers. As a result, Android now has 39% of marketshare while Apple still leads with 57.6% (down from 68.2%). Microsoft, on the other hand gained 1.5% of marketshare. It will be interesting to see how this table changes as Apple is readying iPad 3 and Android tablet makers are ready to storm the market with flurry of tablet releases.

Just few months ago, Galaxy Tab had lions share of Android tablet market share. Thanks to Kindle Fire, that is cut down and if the trend continues, Samsung will join ‘others’ section along with ASUS, Motorola, Toshiba as Kindle has grabbed 36% of Android tablet market in just one quarter. To make things even worse for Samsung, Kindle Fire has 2.5 times more paid downloads than Galaxy Tablets. This means that Kindle Fire is generating more revenue for developers and for Google and can be at the center of focus for developers and content distributors.

Samsung Wave getting Bada 2.0 update

2012-01-28T12:44:00.001+05:30

This is not a rumor and we are talking about the first Wave smartphone from Samsung. Samsung is pushing Bada 2.0 update to S8500 Wave smartphone. It is time for you to periodically check updates for your phone by connecting it to PC and checking Kies application. Follow this twitter feed to get more detail on Bada 2.0 updates.

KDE 4.8 released

2012-01-28T12:37:00.001+05:30

KDE has announced the availability of 4.8 version of KDE Plasma Workspace. Changeset first:

Redesigned power management, integrated with activities
Plasma desktop gets QtQuick-based Plasma widgets
Faster and more scalable file management, Dolphin gets new display engine
KSecretService, new framework for password and credential management
Touch-friendly components and better interoperability
Plasma environment to take advantage of QML (UI framework part of Nokia Qt toolkit)

Source

Get ready for Windows Phone 30 developer challenge

2012-01-27T15:01:00.002+05:30

Do note that this is only for residents of USA. The challenge starts on 31st of January when Official rules are announced. The task is to create a cutting edge appliation in 30 days. 4 winners will get a HDTV and Xbox 360 with Xbox Kinect. Below is the statement from Microsoft:

With great devices hitting the market and the broadly acclaimed user interface based on Metro design principles, Windows Phone is setting the new cool for mobile computing. Take advantage of the excitement and create a cutting edge application - fast. Really fast. 30 days fast.
There will be an opportunity to register for App Hub for free* in week 2 of the challenge. Plus, there’s a pretty sweet prize for 4 winners* - a state-of-the-art entertainment package complete with a 3D TV and the ultimate gaming experience with Xbox Kinect.
Are you in? Sign up today to join the challenge beginning January 31.

Community facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftUserCommunity?sk=app_346240332053750
Community twitter handle: http://twitter.com/#!/UserCommunity

You can sign up here (30 to Launch program) if you are interested in this challenge and to get access to latest tools and resources to help you develop rich Windows Phone appliations.

Flickr Pro adds 3 month subscriptions

2012-01-27T14:40:00.003+05:30

Now you can subscribe for 3 month Flickr pro account and it will cost you $6.95 and you can opt for automatic renewal once in every three months. One year subscription costs $24.95 while new 2 year subscription costs $44.95. In case you are not aware of the advantages of Flickr Pro account,

Unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo)
Unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max, 500MB per video)
The ability to show HD Video
Unlimited storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Archiving of high-resolution original images
The ability to replace a photo
Post any of your photos or videos in up to 60 group pools
Ad-free browsing and sharing
View count and referrer statistics

Compare that to what you get with a Free Account:

300 MB monthly photo upload limit (15MB per photo)
2 video uploads each month (90 seconds max, 150MB per video)
Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)

Galaxy Nexus selling for $99.99 at Amazon

2012-01-27T14:22:00.001+05:30

This amazing pure android device is now available at Amazon wireless store for $99.99 but do note that this is only for new Verizon wireless customers. Those who are looking for upgrade should pay $259.99 for this phone and $179.99 if you want to add new phone to your family account. If you want to buy this device without any contract, you need to pay $729.99. Head here if you need more detail on this phone and head here to place an order.

Get this Official Gmail app with experimental features

2012-01-24T13:03:00.001+05:30

If you have a tablet or smartphone running Android version 4.0, install this official gmail app. This is the default gmail app that comes with ICS and it has some experimental features that one can enable. Do note that the app is very buggy on Honeycomb while it works pretty well on ICS. The experimental features need to be enabled and the two features are:

Full text search
Drag and drop contact chip. Using this feature you can drag contact names between To/CC/BCC fields.

So, go ahead and install the apk from link mentioned above and enjoy this new app. And btw, it's official gmail app that we are talking about.

Source

TIme for Counter Strike fans to celebrate. Game ported to Android tablets

2012-01-23T19:59:00.000+05:30

The great folks at XDA have successfully ported Counter Strike to Android tablet. Above is the video of Counter Strike played using Android tablet using onscreen controls. This version is based on Counter Strike 1.6 mobile version powered by Unity 3D and there are 600 active players online.

Gameplay on Acer Iconia Tab http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZXOibSSW0
Gameplay on Xperia Play : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-v3VpCOl8
Gameplay on SGS II : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JOwY5hT5ko

iBooks: 350,000 text book download in 3 days

2012-01-23T18:52:00.002+05:30

According to research firm Global Equities Research, 350000+ textbooks were downloaded for iBooks 2 during the first three days and iBooks Author app recorded 90,000+ downloads. Looks like a good start for Apple and its textbook partners. Given the lower costs to manufacture or let's say 'create' these text books and no costs for distribution, it can generate huge revenues for authors and for Apple.

LG pushing Gingerbread update to Optimus Black devices in India

2012-01-23T18:33:00.000+05:30

LG India is rolling out Gingerbread update for Optimus Black smartphone. The changelog first:

Improved power management
Enhanced mobile gaming experience
Improved UI to enable faster access and control and a more intuitive user experience
One-touch word selection and copy/paste:
Better Download management
Support for new media formats such as AAC, AVC, MPEG 4 and H263
New features and other improvements: active app management, shortcuts, widgets, icons, app groups, updated calendar options, camera geotagging, better email synching and more precise camera auto-focus.
App updates and pre-loaded Google Plus app

You need to go to this page, download and install USB driver and then go with Software Update.

This gesture based eBook reader is awesome!

2012-01-23T16:35:00.001+05:30

Developed at KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence, this patented eBook interface is amazing. If you are still reading this text, stop reading and play the video. It's worth a million words!

You can use gestures to

flip pages
fold pages
High speed page flip
Page flipping with finger bookmarking
Page turning by using multiple fingers
Page turning by finger gesture speed
Page turning by pressing time
Page turning by finger gesture (write a number using fingers)

Nokia Lumia 710 now costs under 15k INR in India

2012-01-23T11:07:00.001+05:30

Flipkart has slashed the price of Nokia Lumia 710 this weekend, Rs.15,699/- to be precise. That makes it the one of the best smartphones to get for those with budget around 15k. Also, Letsbuy price is now at Rs.15,490. For those who never heard about this device, Lumia 710 is the Windows Phone device from smartphone and below is the specification:

480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches ClearBlack Display
8 GB storage, 512 MB RAM
1.4 GHz Scorpion CPU
5mp camera with 720p video recording
Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery
Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
Nokia maps offline navigation

Update: Saholic price is Rs.14,899/- for Lumia 710 and it's priced at 1.4k at ngpay.

Reviews across the globe:

Anandtech

RIM kicks out co-CEOs, Thorsten Heins named new CEO

2012-01-23T08:55:00.002+05:30

What a way to start a week. RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are kicked out by the board. Thorsten Heins, COO till now, will take the role CEO immediately. Mike Lazaridis will take the role of 'vice chair' of the board and Chair of new Innovative Committee. Jim Balsillie will remain on the board. Below is the full press release

Research In Motion Names Thorsten Heins President and CEO

• Board Acts on Recommendation of Co-CEOs to Implement Succession Plan
• Mike Lazaridis Named Vice Chair of the Board
• Jim Balsillie Remains a Director
• Barbara Stymiest Named Independent Board Chair
• Prem Watsa Named Independent Director

Waterloo, ON – The Board of Directors of BlackBerry® maker Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM's Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.

Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM's Board and Chair of the Board's new Innovation Committee. As Vice Chair, he will work closely with Mr. Heins to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide.

Mr. Heins said he looks forward to continuing to work with Mr. Lazaridis, globally recognized as a technology pioneer. He said, "Mike created a whole new way of communicating and I look forward to continuing our close collaboration."

On the transition to CEO by Mr. Heins, Mr. Lazaridis said, "There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now. With BlackBerry 7 now out, PlayBook 2.0 shipping in February and BlackBerry 10 expected to ship later this year, the company is entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond. Jim, the Board and I all agreed that leader should be Thorsten Heins."

Jim Balsillie remains a member of the Board. "I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company," he said. "I remain a significant shareholder and a Director and, of course, they will have my full support."

Mr. Lazaridis said that he decided to move from Co-Chair to Vice Chair of the Board in order to return the public's focus to what is most important: "the great company we have built, its iconic products, global brand and its talented employees."

Mr. Lazaridis added, "Thorsten has demonstrated throughout his tenure at RIM that he has the right mix of leadership, relevant industry experience and skills to take the company forward. We have been impressed with his operational skills at both RIM and Siemens. I am so confident in RIM's future that I intend to purchase an additional $50 million of the company's shares, as permitted, in the open market."

Mr. Heins said he believes that RIM has tremendous potential. He joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering and became Chief Operating Officer for Product and Sales in August 2011.

"Mike and Jim took a bold step 18 months ago when RIM purchased QNX to shepherd the transformation of the BlackBerry platform for the next decade," Mr. Heins said. "We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim's continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company's future."

Mr. Heins said that RIM has a strong foundation on which to build. "We have a strong balance sheet with approximately $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt. We reported revenue of $5.2 billion in our last quarter, up 24% from the prior quarter, and a 35% year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million."

Mr. Heins said, "BlackBerry 7 has been well received. We are very excited about PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10. The reception of our products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show was encouraging."

He continued, "RIM earned its reputation by focusing relentlessly on the customer and delivering unique mobile communications solutions. We intend to build on this heritage to expand BlackBerry's leadership position."

Mr. Heins said that RIM has grown quickly. "As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains," he said. "We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.

"Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services."

Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada's Group Executive and has been a member of RIM's Board since 2007, has been named the independent Board Chair. John Richardson, formerly Lead Director, will remain on the Board. Prem Watsa, Chief Executive Officer of Fairfax Financial Holdings, also was named to the Board, expanding it to 11 members.

Speaking on behalf of the Board, Ms. Stymiest said: "We believe that Thorsten is the right executive to succeed Mike and Jim. He has 27 years of telecommunications experience, including four years at RIM in senior management positions. As a Board, we have been impressed with his outstanding management skills, his leadership and his accomplishments within the company."

Ms. Stymiest also expressed the Board's respect and admiration for Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie, the company they built, and the steps they have taken to position RIM for the future.

"They created RIM, nurtured it, and in the process not only built an iconic brand, but literally pioneered the smartphone industry," she said. "It is Canada's largest tech company and one of the largest in the world."

Google Sky Maps and Android App Inventor goes open source, Picnik finds its grave

2012-01-22T12:15:00.001+05:30

Google has announced that Picnik service will be closed on 19th of April 2012. As part of closing process, full refund will be done for premium users and one can copy the photos to Google+ or copy the zip file containing all your photos to your local drive. Come 19th of April, nothing will be available and all your photos on picnik will be burned down. Hurry and take your photos elsewhere.

Google has also announced that their Sky Maps application will be donated to open source community and Carnegie Mellon University will head further development of this application/service.

Android App Inventor, another service from Google is going open source and Google and MIT have announced release of intial free an open source version of this tool. You can get the source code from http://code.google.com/p/app-inventor-releases/. People can freely use the term "App Inventor" and puzzle-piece Android logo in their work. MIT's version of app inventor will be named 'MIT App Inventor' and is reserved for the systems coming from MIT.

IMDb app for Windows Phone udpated, live tile support added

2012-01-22T12:07:00.001+05:30

If you are using IMDb app on your Windows Phone, you better check updates for this app as the newer version has live tile support and you can supports Social sharing of Movies and People. If you have never used this application, you better get it now (if you love movies). Here's the feature list of this application:


Over 1.5 million movie and TV titles (database)

Over 3.2 million celebrities, actors, actresses, directors and other crew members (database)

Movie trailers

User reviews for movies and TV shows

Critics reviews for movies and TV shows

Quotes, trivia and goofs about movies and celebrities, Celebrity birthdays.

Your browse and search history on IMDb

Movie showtimes at local theaters near you

TV listings for your local time zone

Recaps of TV shows from previous night

Upcoming movies

Latest entertainment news 

Best Picture - award winners

Top rated movies of all time (IMDb Top 250)

Most popular movies of the day on IMDb (MOVIEmeter)

Most popular celebrities of the day on IMDb (STARmeter)

Lowest rated movies of all time (IMDb Bottom 100)

Most popular movies listed by genre (Action, Horror, Romance, Comedy and many more)

Most popular TV shows

US Box office results

Card.io for Android and iOS is out now

2012-01-22T11:32:00.001+05:30

Start card.io application
Hold the credit card in front of phone's camera and let the app scan the card
Enter few detail for the card (if necessary)
Start accepting payments
In case, the card is worn out, there is an option to enter the data manually

Yes, it's that easy. This app is now available for Android and iOS users. Do note that this app required Android 2.2 or higher and for iPhone users, iOS 4.0 or higher is required. There are few problems though (reported by theverge.com).

Individual transactions are limited to $999.99
Earnings are deposited a week after the initial payment

Note: There's no contracts, setup fees, or monthly fees. You only pay when you charge a card. Pricing is 3.5% plus 30 cents per transaction, and charged amounts are paid to your bank account or PayPal account after 7 days.

CarrierIQ removed from Evo 4G, Evo Design 4G, and Epic 4G

2012-01-22T11:22:00.001+05:30

Sprint is pushing updates to their smartphones to remove Carrier IQ software, a tool that became notorious due to it's privacy violations, tracking user data etc. Evo 4G, Evo Design 4G, and Epic 4G will be getting the updates OTA for next few weeks. Along with removing Carrier IQ software, Sprint is applying some bug fixes for these devices to make the devices get better battery life and more secure.

Summify c/o Twitter

2012-01-22T11:18:00.001+05:30

Summify, the daily news aggregator app now belong to Twitter. In a press post, Summify has announced that they are now part of Twitter. The details of the deal is not yet revealed as of now. Below is part of press statement:

Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

90 million Google+ users

2012-01-22T11:02:00.001+05:30

Google CEO Larry Page has announced during earnings call that Google+ has hit 90 million users. Though they say that 60% users use the service every day, the truth is that this is the number of users who use their Google id and/or service every day. They may or may not login to Google+. This increase in numbers seems to be the effect of pushing Google+ everywhere (from search results to Google's other services).

iPhone 4S and iPad 2 gets untethered jailbreak

2012-01-22T10:56:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Greenpos0n Absinthe, iPhone 4S and iPad 2 users now get untethered jailbreak. Known as Absinthe A5, you can download the same from here for Windows and from here for Mac OS X.

Head here for more information on this jailbreak tool.

NSA releases its first security enhanced Android

2012-01-22T10:49:00.006+05:30

The feature list first:

Per-file security labeling support for yaffs2,
Filesystem images (yaffs2 and ext4) labeled at build time,
Kernel permission checks controlling Binder IPC,
Labeling of service sockets and socket files created by init,
Labeling of device nodes created by ueventd,
Flexible, configurable labeling of apps and app data directories,
Userspace permission checks controlling use of the Zygote socket commands,
Minimal port of SELinux userspace,
SELinux support for the Android toolbox,
Small TE policy written from scratch for Android,
Confined domains for system services and apps,
Use of MLS categories to isolate apps.

Called SEAndroid, this is a project run by NSA to make Android more secure by using SELinux in Android. A highly detailed document explaining what SEAndroid is, how to get the source code and work on the source code, building the source code for specific architectures etc is available in this page.

You can also join the SELinux Mailing list, detail on how to is available at "http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/subscribe.shtml".

Two droids for every iPhone in USA

2012-01-22T10:36:00.001+05:30

Don't get confused here. The previous news that iPhone had cut Android's marketshare in USA is based on a single quarterly marketshare analysis. This news is based on the total number of smartphones in USA.
According to iGR market research firm, Android has 47% of marketshare in USA while Apple has 24% of marketshare. Samsung is the most popular Android handset maker followed by Motorola and HTC.

“Understanding why consumers select specific brands and certain smartphones is critical to the success of OEMs in the highly competitive U.S. handset market,” says iGR Research Analyst, Sarah Thoman, who authored the study. “While a user’s current handset brand influences the selection of a new Android smartphone, many other factors also come into play. For example, handset display quality and functionality also highly influenced the smartphone purchase decision.”

Android-x86 project, run android on x86 tablets

2012-01-22T10:00:00.003+05:30

Android-x86 is open source project to run Android on PC. Guess what, these folks have already ported ICS. The current build, Build 20120101 is test build based on 4.0.3 version of Android and has the following key features:

Kernel 3.0.8 with KMS enabled. Most tablets/netbooks can run Android-x86 in the native resolution.

OpenGL hardware acceleration for AMD Radeon and Intel chipsets. However, if you have trouble with it, you can disable it by adding HWACCEL=0 to the cmdline.

Support Wifi, multitouch and audio.

Experimental support of Renderscript.

Hybrid mode of iso images.

A new text based GUI installer which supports ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems.

External usb drive and sdcard are auto mounted on plugging.

Compressed filesystem (squashfs).

Known issues are:

Camera doesn't work.
Ethernet not working.
Suspend and resume doesn't work on some targets.

Source code of this build is available at http://git.android-x86.org/ and at SourceForge (git://android-x86.git.sf.net/gitroot/android-x86/manifest.git)

Tested Hardware

The following laptops/tablets are tested by this community:

ASUS Eee PCs/Laptops
Viewsonic Viewpad 10
Dell Inspiron Mini Duo
Samsung Q1U
Viliv S5
Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet

Following are the features in latest stable build:

Kernel 2.6.35.7, KMS enable
Wifi support with GUI
Ethernet configuration GUI
Better disk installer
Power Suspend/resume (S3 mode)
Battery Status
Software mouse cursor
Mouse wheel
Support netbook native resolution
Audio (ALSA)
V4l2 Camera support
External monitor support
External storage auto mount support
Support external keyboard
Debug mode with busybox
Bluetooth

Go to this link to find device specific ISOs.

Notion Ink Adam II to get TI OMAP44xx, Wi-Link

2012-01-22T09:17:00.000+05:30

Notion Ink has announced that they will be using TI's OMAP 44xx processor along with TI's power-management IC for better power optimization. Also, Adam II will come with Icecream Sandwich at launch.

"Adam II will release the world’s first Modular Based Software Architecture which will further expand the scope of application development and use nearly every single hardware feature in a “user customizable” application. Drag and drop features will enable easy application modification and Open Source Module will further expand the use cases and tablet deployment. Node operations like in Blender, and Application Authoring Tools are primarily aimed at non-programmers for composing applications, games and use-case flows in a drag-and-drop fashion, utilizing visual editors and behavior-based logic system." said Notion Ink in a blogpost.

The big problem with Adam was not with the power/resource but it was with the type of hardware that is picked (like touch panel, display panel etc) which caused issues and immature software integration. Hope Notion Ink delivers more standard hardware instead of experimenting and trying to be the first in the market to have issue-ridden hardware ans buggy software.

Mozilla's BrowserID is alternative to OpenID

2012-01-22T09:11:00.002+05:30

Mozilla has been working for a while to provide better authentication system for sites than OpenID, which it thinks is not so secure. The result of their work is 'BrowserID', released yesterday and is already implemented in popular sites like Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, MySpace. For instructions on how to implement this on your site, head to this page. The process is extremely simple.

"Many web sites store extensive user data and act on behalf of the user. While the browser may be fully under the user’s control, many of the services that users enjoy are not. Sometimes, these web services handle data in ways that are of questionable value to the user, even detrimental," points out Ben Adida, Mozilla's Tech Lead on Identity and User Data. "It’s clear that Mozilla needs to step up and provide, in addition to the Firefox browser, certain services to enhance users’ control over their online experience and personal data."

Sony to include GLONASS satellite navigation system in upcoming phones

2012-01-22T09:04:00.000+05:30

GLONASS satellite navigation system, a Russian radio-based satellite navigation system will be implemented in upcoming Sony smartphones Xperia S and Xperia Ion. Also, the following smartphones already have this technology built-in but was deactivated:

Xperia Arc
Xperia Arc S
Xperia Ray
Xperia Neo
Xperia Pro
Xperia Play
Xperia Active
Live with Walkman

GLONASS, Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema from Russia consists of 24 modern active satellites. When used along with standard 31-satellite based GPS, GLONASS improves accuracy and better positioning. Tests done in San Francisco showed 50% better accuracy when GLONASS is used in conjunction with GPS as shown in the below image:

Verizon planning country wide Voice-over-LTE

2012-01-22T08:51:00.000+05:30

By 2013, Verizon plans to deploy nation wide VoLTE in USA. Verizon is currently testing VoLTE in two cities. "We’re continuing to work on VoLTE and the services it brings, and will share any launch or availability plans in due course." said Verizon spokesperson. VoLTE is similar to VoIP where voice is caried over data networks. VZ's VoLTE network is based on "IP Multimedia Subsystem", an architectural framework to deliver IP multimedia serivces over LTE network. For more information on how this network works, read this article.

Angry birds 'year of the dragon' released for iOS and Android

2012-01-20T22:39:00.003+05:30

Yes. On the occassion of Chinese new year, Rovio has released Angry birds seasons : Year of the Dragon for Android and iOS. Features in this version:

The Angry Birds are celebrating Chinese New Year by chasing after the pigs. The night sky is lighting up -- and it's not just fireworks!
Celebrate with a vibrant red Chinese New Year theme!
15 challenging levels explode with fireworks and lanterns!
Mighty Eagle transforms into the fearsome Mighty Dragon!
Mighty Dragon available for free in Year of the Dragon episode!

The game is free to download and below is a teaser youtube video of the same:

Official Wikipedia app for Android released

2012-01-19T09:29:00.001+05:30

Wikipedia has released their official app for Android and is available for download here. Here's a quick feature list:

Save article to read later or offline
Search articles nearby
Share articles
Read article in a different language
Full screen search

Do send your feedback on the app to twitter.com/WikimediaMobile.

FourSquare now provides you restaurant menus

2012-01-19T08:37:00.002+05:30

This should make foodies love FourSquare even more. After releasing Explore feature that delivers personalized results, FourSquare has now added restaurant menus to their database. For now, this seems to be available for restaurants in USA and there are 250,000 restaurants having food menus. These menus are added to the right pane of venue pages. Give it a try and let us know how it is.

iOS and Windows Phone marketshare on the rise

2012-01-18T23:21:00.000+05:30

Remember we recently posted on iPhone 4S eating up Android's marketshare. Well, nielsen's latest report adds a bit more to this.

First, more American are intersted in buying smartphones now. Majority of 25-34 and 18-24 age groups now own a smartphone and 45% of smartphone users have subscribed to internet. Second, Windows Phone marketshare went up slightly and it at 1.4% now. Third, Android's marketshare takes a slight dip (down to 46.9%) and is almost same as iOS's (44.5%). The coming two quarters will be even more interesting as Windows Phone is gaining ground, thanks to Nokia's Lumia series and AT&T LTE windows phone devices. Finally, if you are wondering about RIM's share, it's below 5% now (at 4.5%)

Motorola Xoom getting ICS OTA

2012-01-18T23:09:00.002+05:30

If you own a Motorola Xoom, do look out for over-the-air updates coz your tablet might stumble upon Icecream Sandwich update. You can check for updates by clicking on Settings>About tablet>System updates. Do note that this is for WiFi-only Xoom. Head to this page for more detail on how the update is working etc (forum discussion).

Facebook takes top spot in Brazil

2012-01-18T23:05:00.001+05:30

Thanks to 192% increase in total unique visitors from Dec'10 to Dec'11, Facebook is now the top social networking site in Brazil. Intersting aspect is that unique visitors to Orkut went up by 5%, which could be embarrassing for Brazilians given that pre-historic nature of Orkut. Anyways, it's good to see that something other than Orkut is at the top in Brazil. For more statistics on this, head here.

Apple starts Reuse and Recycle program in UK

2012-01-18T22:57:00.000+05:30

Apple's 'Reuse and Recycle' program is now active in UK. This means that you can go to "http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/reuse_and_recycle" and request to recycle your Apple's device. The better the device is, the more money you get. The recycle program is handled by Dataserv.

If you have an Apple device lying at home without being used, go ahead and send it to Apple. You might get few pounds.

Yawn! Apple sues Sammy again

2012-01-18T11:41:00.000+05:30

This time, Apple is targeting barn on 10 Samsung smartphones in Germany. Apple has field a lawsuit against Samsung in Dusseldorf Regional Court and this time, they are requesting ban on all Galaxy series smartphones (15 in total). There is another lawsuit filed against Samsung requesting ban on tablets designed by Samsung. The hearing will happen in August for smartphone lawsuit and tablets lawsuit will commence in September.

Thanks to this public spat between these two companies, European Commission is now investigating this patent fight(s) and it may begin anti-trust investigation on both the companies, according to arstechnica.

Source

Alienware targets casual gamers with X51 desktop

2012-01-18T11:29:00.002+05:30

Looks like Alienware is feeling the heat from consoles and handheld gaming devices. Today, Alienware has announced X51, a gaming PC with a starting price of $699. This is from a brand that has always targeted extreme gamers with monstrous rigs. And it looks like a small formfactor PC. Onto the specs:

Highly customizable
Intel's 2nd generation Core ix processors
Nvidia Geforce GT/GTX series GPUs with GDDR5 memory
Mini-ITX motherboard
Upto 8GB of DDR3 memory
1TB 7200rpm HDD
Windows 7 home premium
Slot loading DVD drive (bluray optional)
USB 2.0 (6x); USB 3.0 (2x); Microphone In; Headphone/Speaker Out; HDMI 1.4 Output; RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet; Front, Rear and Center Speaker Ports; SPDIF Digital Output (TOSLINK); SPDIF Digital Output (Coax)
240W PSU or 330W PSU
13.5” (343mm) x w: 3.74” (95mm) x d: 12.52” (318mm), 5.49 Kg

This image shows how tiny X51 is, sitting next to one of the monster rigs from Alienware:

And the following image shows how the components are packed. It looks pretty tight to me. Forget about manually customizing this rig btw:

We wish all the best to Alienware for this new direction that they are taking.

Jerry Yang resigns from Yahoo! board

2012-01-18T11:09:00.002+05:30

"My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future."

This is what Jerry Yang sent in a letter to Roy Bostock, Yahoo! board chairman. Yes, Yahoo! co-founder is out of Yahoo! now. The letter is a request to Yahoo! board to relieve him from being part of Board of Directors, position that he held since 1995. We do have a feeling that many more resignations are to be announced in near future accompanied by sale of Yahoo! (probably to Microsoft).

"Jerry Yang is a visionary and a pioneer, who has contributed enormously to Yahoo! during his many years of service," said Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board. "It has been a pleasure to work with Jerry. His unique strategic insights have been invaluable. He has always remained focused on the best interests of Yahoo!'s stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and more than 700 million users. And while I and the entire Board respect his decision, we will miss his remarkable perspective, vision and wise counsel. On behalf of the Board, we thank Jerry and wish him all the very best in his future endeavors."

LG announces Optimus Pad LTE

2012-01-18T10:59:00.003+05:30

LG has officially announced Optimus Pad LTE, first tablet from LG with LTE support. The specs first:

Operating System: Android 3.2 Honeycomb
Memory: User 32GB (Micro SD up to 32GB)
Size: 245 x 151.4 x 9.34 mm
Weight: 497 g
Display: 8.9-inch IPS True HD Display
Resolution: 1280 x 768
Camera: 8MP (Rear) / 2MP (Front)
Processor: Qualcomm 1.5GHz Dual-Core / Dual Channel Processor
Battery: 6,800mAh
Others: HDMI, DLNA

"With tablets generating five times more traffic than the average smartphone, it's not a huge jump to assume that tablet users need and want faster connectivity," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. "The combination of LG's LTE technology with the tablet form factor is a clear advantage for consumers who use a tablet as their primary consumption device when on the move."

At least on paper, the tablet looks to be awesome. IPS panel, 8mp camera, microSD support and 32GB onboard, weights less than half a kilo. There is no mention of when the tablet will be release or what the price would be.

Microsoft announces Windows 8 tablet hardware requirements

2012-01-18T00:51:00.000+05:30

Don't worry. Those who are either joking or are serious about having Ctrl, Alt and Del buttons (you know the need to have these three) will be dumb founded as Microsoft requires that Windows 8 PCs without a keyboard does need to implement Ctrl+Alt+Del sequence. Now, on to the more important requirements. The requirements are divided into three parts.

System Requirements
Device Requirements
Filter Driver Requirements

Head here to download PDF documents that explain these requirements in detail. By 'detail', I mean details running into hundreds of pages. Head here if you don't want to spend the rest of your life trying to finish reading these documents.

Nokia is the most trusted brand in India

2012-01-18T00:42:00.002+05:30

Once again, Nokia is awarded the title 'Most trusted brand in India' by Trust Research Advisory's Brand Trust Report 2012. While Nokia continued to stay on top, Tata took second position followed by LG and Samsung while Sony shipped to fift place.

"In life, without trust, there is nothing. Each time a human engages with anything, the basis for all decisions is trust. Be it brands, other humans, or just ideas, one will react to them on the basis of the trust it generates. Last year was tumultuous for several brands, but those which focused on trust, have gained market-share, revenues and profits. On the other hand, the brands which have focused only on the latter, have invariably lost both. Focus on building trust and all else will follow automatically". said N. Chandramouli, CEO of Trust Research Advisory

Dell Streak 7 gets custom ICS ROM

2012-01-18T00:36:00.000+05:30

Do note that this is a beta and highly experimental build and do this at your own risk. Here is a list of good and bad things:

What works:

Wifi
gapps (mostly)
audio
touchscreen
overclocking
superuser
rotation sensors
Screenshots (Press Power + Volume-)
capacitive buttons (home, back, menu)
Video Acceleration
USB Mount
External Storage

What doesn't:

some lag
3g/4g/gsm radio
camera
Bluetooth (until I check with DJ_Steve)
GPS

In case you are interested in installing this ROM, head here for complete procedure.

CyanogenMod music app for Android announced

2012-01-18T00:29:00.001+05:30

And it looks amazing ain't it? This player will replace Android's default media player in CyanogenMod ROMs. With support for gesture and motion controlled playback, lockscreen integration and downloadable themes, this player is surely gonna be a huge hit. Using gesture controlled playback, one can play/pause playback by flipping the phone and shake the phone to perform custom actions. You just need to wait for few more weeks to get your hands on this application.

iTunes match expands to 19 more countries

2012-01-18T00:16:00.000+05:30

iTunes match service is expanded to 19 more countries and this is the list:

Argentina
Bolivia
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Estonia
Guatemala
Honduras
Latvia
Lithuania
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Venezuela

This makes it total of 37 countries where this service is available.

ICS look for GNOME3 in Ubuntu

2012-01-17T08:09:00.000+05:30

Yes. If you are in love with your ICS smartphone or if you want to get ICS look for your OS, wmlcloud has posted steps to put ICS theme for GNOME3 in Ubuntu.
Files that you need:

Roboto Font
IceCream Shell
ICS wallpaper

The procedure is simple for those who are good at installing themes.

Install Roboto Font and apply the font from Fonts settings.
Copy IceCream Shell to your home
Use Gnome Tweak Tool to install ICS theme and apply the theme.
Change the wallpaper to ICS wallpaper

For those who are new to this stuff, you can follow step by step guide here

Android market gets Official NBC app

2012-01-17T08:00:00.001+05:30

The official NBC is now available for Android users to watch latest NBC shows in your smartphone and here is the feature list:

The best video highlights and clips from your favorite NBC shows
Exclusive photo galleries from NBC.com
Interactive games, trivia and more
Schedule and previews of upcoming shows
Search content across the NBC network
Customizable myNBC dashboard with My Feed, a personalized view of your favorite shows and related content
Full Episodes coming soon!

This application will be available for the following devices:

Nexus One
Nexus S
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Samsung Galaxy S II
HTC Evo 4G
HTC Evo 3D
HTC myTouch 4G
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
Motorola Droid X

You can now download the application from here.

Wikipedia will be down tomorrow for 24 hours

2012-01-17T07:56:00.003+05:30

Jimmy Wales has announced that English version of Wikipedia will be down for 24 hours on 18th of January (tomorrow) as a protest against SOPA, anti-piracy bills and Protect IP act. This decision was taken after voting done by Wikipedia community. Reddit has already announced that their site will be blacked tomorrow and Mozilla too is planning to to replace content on various sites with anti-SOPA messages for the day.

Nokia Lumia 710 costs 0.01$ at Costco, walmart giving the same for free

2012-01-17T07:45:00.002+05:30

Grab it people, grab it ASAP. A 4G Lumia 710 for a penny (2 year contract). This is amazing deal folks given that T-Mobile is selling the same for $49.99. And btw, there is a better deal. Wal-mart is now giving Lumia 710s are for free on contract. If you are not sure how this phone is, check the following reviews:

Cnet
Tomshardware
Pc-tablet
Theverge
Ubergizmo

Update: T-mobile has slashed the price of Lumia 710 to 0$. Yes, this smartphone is free with a two year contract at T-Mobile

HP introduces 132" multitouch wall, VantagePoint

2012-01-17T07:32:00.001+05:30

Looks like Microsoft's Surface has some competition. This is the VantagePoint from HP, a 132"(11ft x 4ft) multitouch wall. This dispay wall is matrix of 6 HP LD4730G touchscreen displays with Ultra-Micro bezel.

Multitouch is achieved by using infrared based touch overlay and supports max of 32 touch points. At the backend, there is HP Z800 workstation powered by a dual core processor and ATI FirePro card. On the software side, Total Immersion's D'Fusion augmented reality software is integrated. Here's a quick look at video demo of this wall:

There is no pricing detail for VantagePoint and release dates too are not announced.

Notion Ink preparing ICS for Adam

2012-01-16T23:08:00.002+05:30

Yes. The company is not dead, yet. Notion Ink has updated their blog with a video (above one) of Adam tablet running Icecream Sandwich 4.0.3. It's still in alpha stage but seeing that it is there should give a bit of relief for all those poor buyers who purchased this tablet. Below is the list of major fixes and ironically, it's a big list:

Audio
Sensors (including Compass)
Bluetooth
Sleep bug partially fixed (you need to change the wi-fi policy for this).
Hardware Acceleration
Accelerated Video
Wi-Fi
HDMI Video (no sound)
Capacitive Buttons
Back Buttons
SD Card Mount
GPS
120dpi launcher fix
0.39 Kernel

In case you want to give this build a try, you can download the ROM from here or here. Do remember the following known issues (to be fixed soon):

3G, though it’s working on kernel level now
Camera
USB plugged-in at boot
USB mass storage and MTP
USB Flash Drive
Light Sensor
Sleep Bug
Video Acceleration for High Quality YouTube Video
HDMI Sound

Sony Xperia S ready for pre-order

2012-01-16T22:50:00.000+05:30

Yes, the new superhot smartphone from Sony, the first product from Sony after kicking Ericsson out is now available for pre-order in the UK. 5th of March is set as the official release date and according to Clove, the phone is priced at £389.99. Here's a quick look at Xperia S specs:

4.3" HD resolution display (720x1280 with 342 ppi)
Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
1GB of RAM, 16/32GB of internal storage
Dual core 1.5GHz MSM8260 Snapdragon processor, Adreno 220 GPU
12mp camera with dual LED flash, 1080p video recording
1.3mp front facing camera, 720p video
Gingerbread pre-installed, upgrade to ICS imminent
Active noise cancellation
1750mAh battery
HDMI out, DLNA, NFC

Tizen+Bada = Tizen

2012-01-15T15:56:00.000+05:30

Samsung's Tae-Jin Kang has announced that Bada OS will be added to Tizen project. So, technically, Tizen will be Moblin+Maemo+MeeGo+Bada. Way to go Tiger. Once the integration is complete, Tizen will be able to run the minute number of apps lying in Bada's appstore and a single SDK for both Bada and Tizen app developers.

PC-BSD 9.0 out now

2012-01-15T15:26:00.001+05:30

PC-BSD team and iXsystems has announced the availability of PC-BSD 9.0, FreeBSD based unix distribution (based on FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE). Highlights of this release are:

Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE.

Support for installing a variety of Window Managers, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and more!

Improved PBI system, allows library sharing, binary diff updating, custom repositories, digital signing and more!

Support for “freebsd-update” via the System Update GUI.

New Control Panel, providing consistent configuration options across various Window Managers.

Improved networking utilities, including wifi quick-connect.

Enhanced “Life-Preserver” utility for doing off-site rsync backups of user data.

New VirtualBox / VMware disk images, with integrated guest tools.

Support for UFS+Journaling out of box.

New graphical boot options page.

Support for installation to BootCamp partitions on OS X systems.

You can download the OS from here.

Source

Imagination PowerVR Series 6 GPU and TI OMAP 5 announced

2012-01-15T15:11:00.002+05:30

This is the reference design for Texas Instruments OMAP 5 SoC. Specs:

OMAP5430 for smartphone and OMAP5432 for mobile computing and consumer products
Dual ARM Cortex A15 MPCore processors (speeds upto 2GHz, 2-3x better perf)
Dual ARM Cortex M4 low processors for low power offload
PowerVR SGX544-MPx GPU units (5x faster)
2xLPDDR2/2xDDR3/DDR3L
Dedicated 2D BitBlt graphics accelerator
28nm CMOS
Full HD 1080p60 multi-standard video encode/decode
Enhanced image quality, up to 24-megapixel 2D or 12-megapixel S3D
M-Shield™ mobile security technology enhanced with ARM TrustZone® support and based on open APIs
Low power audio, 140+ hours of CD-quality audio playback
Up to three simultaneous, high-resolution, color-rich LCD display support
USB 3.0 OTG
HDMI 1.4a
TI WireLink wireless connectivity
Devices with these chips should be ready by early 2013

Imagination Technologies has announced Series 6 lineup of their popular GPU brand, PowerVR. G6200 and G6400 GPU IP will be the first products in this series. This new series will be 20x faster than current series and at the same time, will be 5x more efficient.

Says Hossein Yassaie, CEO, Imagination: “Based onour experience in shipping hundreds of millions of GPU cores, plus extensive marketand customer feedback, we have been able to set a new standard in GPU architecture,particularly in the areas of power, bandwidth and efficiency – the key metricsby which GPUs are now judged. We are confident that with the Rogue architecturewe have a very clear technology advantage and an exceptional roadmap for thePowerVR Series6 family which our partners can depend on.”

Series6 GPUs are available for licensing now. Do note that Series6 GPUs are compatible with Series5 and Series5XT series of GPUs and also support all the latest graphics APIs and some of these products may get to support DirectX 11.1.

Source1
Source2

LLama(r) ass kicked! SOPA hearing stalled

2012-01-15T14:02:00.002+05:30

Woo Hoo. Looks like Lamar Smith now clearly understands the phrase "It really whips Lama's ass". Thanks to continuous boycotts and public uproar, the hearing to pass the idiotic SOPA act brought forward by this idiot is stalled due to lack of consensus.

“Although SOPA, despite the removal of this provision, is still a fundamentally flawed bill, I have decided that postponing the scheduled hearing on DNS blocking with technical experts is the best course of action at this time. Right now, the focus of protecting the Internet needs to be on the Senate where Majority Leader Reid has announced his intention to try to move similar legislation in less than two weeks.” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa

I think it's time for Lamar (as)S Smith to sit and cry in his office cabinet!

Google TV gets OnLive

2012-01-12T19:06:00.000+05:30

Onlive Cloud gaming service will come pre-installed on all Google TV devices, Google and OnLive announced today. This bring high performance console class gaming to Google TV (kind of makes the circle complete). Even better news is that if you have Vizio Internet App Plus devices equipped with Google TV 2.0, start gaming right away using Universal OnLive Wireless Controller. Most of the games can be tried for 30 minutes and if you get OnLive PlayPack Bundle, you get unlimited access to 140+ games available.

Source

2011 PC sales growth slows down to near 0%, Lenovo and Apple gain

2012-01-12T18:44:00.002+05:30

According to Gartner, PC shipments fell by 5.9% during the last quarter in USA while global shipments fell by 1.4%. Hightlights from the analysis (desktop PCs, notebooks, mini-notebooks, mini-desktops, all inones, netbooks included, tablets not included):

Apple is the only top vendor in USA to register positive growth, takes no.3 spot from Acer, which falls to no.5 spot.
Lenovo takes no.2 spot in worldwide sales from Dell.
HP's sales fell by a 26.1% last quarter in USA and worldwide sales fell by 16.2%
Lenovo and ASUS register strong growth, thanks to successfull lineup of notebooks and netbooks
Dell's sales estimates look better than HP's. If the trend continues, Dell may retake no.1 spot from HP in USA.
Lenovo growth is better than that of Apple's in USA and is just a matter of time before it takes place in top 5.

A million CyanogenMod users!

2012-01-12T18:26:00.002+05:30

Team CyanogenMod has announced on Google Plus that there are more than a million active users for CM ROMs. You can monitor the stats here.

It is good to see that the latest stable mods are the among the top most installed ROMs. Our hearty congratulations to Team CM and thank you for giving us such amazing ROMs.

Seagate Satellite is 4G LTE hotspot as well as a harddrive

2012-01-12T14:57:00.002+05:30

This boxy thing has 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, 500GB of storage and a battery. Or you can just say 4G LTE Mobile wireless storage, a first in the industry. Developed by Verizon and Seagate, users can download media directly to the HDD without the need to have it connected to PC all the time and stream the media to three devices (max) over Wi-Fi.

“Seagate continues to innovate in new ways for consumers to enjoy their use of storage technologies,” said Scott Horn, vice president of global marketing for Seagate. “This showcase of 4G LTE storage opens up a whole new world of possibilities for consumers to access the content they desire on the go.”

Source

Bluestacks bring Android apps to Windows 8

2012-01-12T14:34:00.001+05:30

BlueStacks has announced that their BlueStacks App player is now compatible with Windows 8. If you already using Windows 8 Developer Preview and lament lack of Metro apps, give Bluestacks app player a try. This software installs android applicatoins to Windows 8. Rosen Sharma, BlueStacks CEO is in talks with OEMs to bundle BlueStacks software with Windows 7 (AMD, HP and InHon are already onboard).

If you are using Windows 7 or Windows 8 DP, do give this a try. You can download the app from here

Google+ iOS app and Google Search Android app udpated

2012-01-12T14:24:00.002+05:30

Google+ iOS application has received an update yesterday that lets users to start a video hangout from messenger. Apart from few bug fixes, there is a new photos UI.

Google has also updated Google Search android application after a really really long time and the changes are:

New color scheme and simplified UI
Faster
Enhanced suggestions and query editing
Better localized suggestions and search results for more countries
Long press on history items to remove them

This is how the new 'Google Search' app for Android looks lik now:

Bing is now no.2

2012-01-12T14:07:00.000+05:30

According to comScore, Microsoft's Bing search engine overtook Yahoo search to become the main competitor to Google Search. But, the change of position is more due to Google eating up 0.5% of Yahoo's share. While Google's share increased by 0.5%, Yahoo's declined by 0.6% and Microsoft increased Bing marketshare by 0.1%. Fore more detail on marketshares, hit the Source link.

Source

VISA certifies NFC enabled phones for payments

2012-01-12T14:01:00.001+05:30

The following list of phones are now allowed to use Visa's payWave (TM) NFC based payment system for paying your bills at stores:

Samsung Galaxy S II
LG Optimus Net
Blackberry Bold 9900
Blackberry Bold 9790
Blackberry Curve 9380
Blackberry Curve 9360

“This is an important step for Visa, its financial institution partners and the mobile industry,” said Bill Gajda, Global Head of Mobile Product, Visa Inc. “In addition to issuing plastic magnetic stripe or chip-enabled payment cards, financial institutions can now consider offering their accountholders a way to transform their smartphones into fully functional mobile payment devices.”

For these phones, Visa payWave application will be loaded on a secure SIM card. There is no information on where and when to get these special SIM cards or any information on how to turn your SIM card into secure SIM loaded with payWave application.

“Today’s announcement is another example of the momentum we are seeing behind NFC as an industry standard for mobile payments,” said Nick Holland, senior analyst Yankee Group. “Yankee Group predicts that the value of NFC-based transactions will grow significantly, from $27 million in 2010 to $40 billion in 2014.”

Google butt-kicked by iPhone 4GS!

2012-01-12T01:26:00.001+05:30

I thought Apple lost it with iPhone 4S. Correction, WE thought. But look at the above chart. It is seriously kicking the butt of every other smartphone. Thanks to the superhit iPhone 4S, Google's marketshare took a nosedive from 60% to 47%. Yes, 13% drop just because of one single smartphone. RIM on the other hand is fast declining and entering the zombie state to party with Windows Mobile and other zombie OSes. Windows Phone 7 has recorded slight improvement though and we hope that by this time next year, we might see it well above the 'other OS' line. The top three selling devices for last quarter are

iPhone 4S
iPhone 4
iPhone 3GS

And these are following by Samsung Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy S II.

Source

The days of replacing notebook graphics are coming!

2012-01-12T01:14:00.002+05:30

Remember all that cursing directed at your old laptop for not being able to run blockbuster games and for not being able to upgrade the h/w? Well, those days are coming to an end. This could very well be the final nail in the coffin to rest clunky desktop PCs. Thanks to blazing bandwidth and throughput offered by Thunderbolt, MSI has announced a Thunderbolt based GPU enclosure that one can use to upgrade graphics on their laptops that come with Thunderbolt port. There are some rules though.

Laptop should have Thunderbolt port.
GPU should not take more than 150W power
GPU should fit in the case
GPU should respect 10Gbps throughput per channel.

This is just the beginning and as Thunderbolt gets better, so does the capacity of GPUs allowed to be fit in such enclosures. This enclosure will come out by mid-2012.

Source

Razer is cooking a gaming tablet curry

2012-01-12T00:50:00.001+05:30

Project Fiona. That's what they call it and it has some interesting design. Fiona is to tablets what Xperia Play is to smartphones. It's still a concept though and it's powered by Core i7, sends adrenaline to your spine via 1280x800 resolution display (probably 10.1"). Below is the demo video from Razer:

"This idea seems pretty interesting, but I'm skeptical as far as market penetration goes. Since it's gaming and it's Razer, they're targeting the gaming market, but I don't know if the gaming market necessarily needs a tablet for gaming. There are already handheld consoles, and those have proven they can do the job pretty well," Tuong Nguyen, analyst at Gartner (NYSE: IT), told TechNewsWorld.

Sony shows off superhot tablet at CES

2012-01-12T00:36:00.000+05:30

This superhot tablet is called Sony Vaio L. This Windows 8 tablet comes with a capacitive touch keyboard. Yes, the keyboad doesnt' have any hard keys. It's a smooth capacitive surface and keys are illuminated. Sony has also showcased a concept hybrid ultrabook and yes, it does look superhot.

Here is a video taken by laptopmag at CES:

There is absolutely no information provided by Sony about the specifics of these products and these gadgets are locked behind glass. We will update you when we have more information on these.

Samsung refreshes series 5 Chromebook

2012-01-12T00:16:00.001+05:30

The good thing is that Samsung has ditched Intel's Atom for Celeron to power series 5 Chromebook. As usual, the specs:

12.1" display
16GB internal memory
$399 for Wi-Fi only and $449 for 3G+Wi-Fi
USB 2.0, Displayport, DVI, headphone jack
Available in Q2

Samsung launches Galaxy Tab 620 in India

2012-01-11T23:33:00.001+05:30

Priced at Rs.30250/-, Galaxy Tab 620, globally known as Galaxy Tab 7 Plus will be available in Metallic Gray and Snow Silver colors. Quick specs:

1.2GHz Dual core SoC, 1GB RAM, 16/32GB ROM, microSD
9.96mm thick and 345gms
Android 3.2 honeycomb with TouchWiz UI on top
1080p fullHD playback
7" WSVGA
4000 mAh battery
3mp rear camera and 2mp front facing camera

Source

Intel x86 smartphone (Medfield) news

2012-01-11T23:04:00.002+05:30

First, this will be the entry of X86 processors into smartphone mainstream market. Second, it's brave on Intel's part to not give up after MeeGo disaster. Third, they are signing up new partners. Specs first:

Yeah, yeah. It looks boxy but hey, it's just a reference design and as per Intel's and anandtech's benchmarks, it's blazing fast, faster than any other Android. How fast? Medfield is to ARM what Core ix is to Phenom. Period!

The reference unit is powered by Atom Z2460, running at 1.6GHz and is based on 32nm wafer. The display size is at 4", an 8mp rear camera, 1.3mp front facing camera, HD video playback, HDMI port to play FullHD videos on external TV/monitor, Gyroscope, accelerometer and the usual stuff. The interesting thing is that even on a 1430mAh battery, this device is said to give upto 8 hours of 3G talktime, can last 5 hours on 3G internet browsing, 14 days standy time etc and it supports NFC.
It is interesting to see that Anandtech already did a few benchmark tests and you can read about the tests here and here is what Intel says about benchmarks:

Lenovo K800

If Medfield manages to create history, Lenovo K800 will take the honour of being the first smartphone based on this hardware platform and it does look good. Specs first, as usual:

Atom Z2460 1.6GHz (single core, HT enabled)
China Telecom to be the first carrier
Android 4.0 ICS (Lenovo LeOS skin)
4.5" High definition display
8mp camera with dual LED flash and front facing camera

Motorola joins Medfield

Yes, the big guy will be taking seat next to Lenovo and LG. Motorola and Intel signed a multi-year multi-device contract and we do hope that Motorola gives the much needed boost to Intel's plans the way they promoted Android.

"We are delighted to be partnering with Intel to deliver smartphones and tablets based on Intel's Atom processor to consumers and businesses," said Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility.

"The best of Intel computing is coming to smartphones," said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. "Our efforts with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will help to establish Intel processors in smartphones and provide a solid foundation from which to build in 2012 and into the future."

Sandisk 128GB SDXC card is world's fastest

2012-01-11T22:31:00.001+05:30

This flash memory card here is the world's fastest SDXC memory. A 128Gb card costs $399.99. Yes, it costs more than most Point and shoot digital cameras. Do you know what the transfer rate is for this card? It's 45MB/sec. It's faster than most USB 2.0 harddrives. Sandisk says that using this card, one can copy a 1hr long HD video to a PC in 5 minutes while 500 high resolution photos in under a minute. If you think the price it too high, there is a 64GB card that costs $199.99.

"Consumer video capture is drivinguser-generated content creation," said Chris Chute, researchmanager, worldwide digital imaging solutions, IDC. "This is thefirst year that more than half of all video captured will be in HD,and that number is set to reach nearly 80 percent in 2014. Thistrend highlights the need for memory cards that are fast enough tohandle a massive data flow while offering enough capacity to storethe resulting files."

Desiibond's Newsroll

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