Home » Archives for March 22, 2011
Archive for March 22nd, 2011
There is an upcoming auction of the so-called fourth generation, or 4G, spectrum. The last time Ofcom held an auction, for 3G in 2000, it raised a record £22.5bn for the UK Treasury – well before the rise of smartphones that are now so prevalent. The auctions due to happen in 2012.
The additional spectrum to be sold off should mean faster speeds for downloading data to phones. Ofcom says the auction is equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use today. The actual parts of the spectrum being sold – at the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidths – will be parts of the wireless spectrum historically used by analogue TV, which is being switched off as digital is rolled out.
Cheques books at the ready then!
Note to Matt – I have 90p in my piggy bank, should we club together and buy it?
Posted by: Gareth
We knew that the iPad 2 would go on sale on Friday 25th March here in the UK and the time that you can go buy in-store (if you want to queue) is set to be 5pm. No word yet on pre-order or reserve for in-store collection though but I’d say given that we’re now so close to launch day it’s pretty unlikely.
Firm UK pricing has also been announced today and you can see the matrix below (note prices inclusive of VAT).
Posted by: Matt
Apple today announced that iPad 2, the second-generation of its third post-PC device, will go on sale in 25 additional countries this Friday, 25 March. iPad 2 will be available at Apple retail stores and select Apple Authorised Resellers at 5 p.m. local time, and online through the Apple Store (www.apple.com/uk/) beginning at 1 a.m. GMT. Apple today also announced that all models of iPad 2 will be available in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and additional countries in April.
“While competitors are still struggling to catch up with our first iPad, we’ve changed the game again with iPad 2”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the US, and customers around the world have told us they can’t wait to get their hands on it. We appreciate everyone’s patience and we are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone”.
April 19th is the big day that the BlackBerry PlayBook will hit retail stores in North America and Canada. Here in the UK we will have to wait just a little longer and no date is yet announced for the European launch. Pricing appears to be very much in line with the iPad2 starting at $499 for the 16GB model, and $599 and $699 respectively for the 32GB and 64GB models.
Research in Motion has also announced plans to make the highly-anticipated BlackBerry PlayBook tablet available in more than 20,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada.
“The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet that is already being widely praised as a multi-tasking powerhouse with an uncompromised web experience and an ultra-portable design,” said Mike Lazaridis, President & Co-CEO, Research In Motion. “Given the high level of customer interest in the BlackBerry PlayBook, we are particularly pleased to be working with such an amazing lineup of retail partners.”
Just the other week I managed to get my hands on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc (aka XPERIA X12) and recorded a video tour and demo of some of the features of the handset. There were a few things that I didn’t manage to cram in to the original 20-minute-long video so I decided to record another here for your viewing pleasure.
In this video I quickly recap the hardware spec and then look at customising/moving icons in the program menu before showing off the email view with preview pane, a feature unique to the Arc.
We shall have a proper unboxing video and full review of the Arc just as soon as we can get our hands on the final retail hardware. Remember that we are still looking at a prototype in the video below.
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