Gareth’s last podcast as a bachelor sees the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc being reviewed by Matt, James playing with the Motorola Xoom and a couple of tablets from Sony should be arriving in the coming months. Gareth’ reminds us all, again about the nomination for the award.
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We first saw the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc back in February of this year at an event held in London on the same day as the main announcement at MWC in Barcelona.
Sony Ericsson announced a number of new handsets back them and they are now starting to find their way in to stores here in the UK. Just last week we reviewed the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play and we’re pretty impressed with it’s performance and the Playstation gaming features.
Now it’s over to me to complete my review of the XPERIA Arc. Many of you will know that I’ve had an Arc for some time and have done a number of videos and demos of the Arc in action. However, I’ve only had the final retail version of the Arc for a short time. It’s been our policy for a while now to only write the review once we have the final hardware and ROM build as things can and do change otherwise.
Sony Ericsson have crammed the Arc with some great technology such as the Bravia Mobile Engine and also an Exmor R sensor in the camera. So does this stack up to make a great smartphone or are we looking at just another Android slab?
Read on to see!
With the extraordinary success of the original Wii, it’s hardly surprising that Nintendo are lining up a successor, and it’s been revealed that it will be arriving sometime next year. There will also be a working demonstration at the E3 gaming show in June. Although sales of the current Wii having been slowing down in recent quarters, talk of 86 million units sold globally is no mean feat, despite it arriving around 5 years ago; I still remember the mad scramble that would drive people to pay double the retail price on eBay for the always-out-of-stock console.
The Wii was the first console with motion controlled gaming and it wouldn’t be surprising if Nintendo had another unique gameplay aspect up their sleeve. Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata said that "It will offer a new way of playing games within the home" which does sound like a new gaming concept. Mind control maybe? We’ll find out later this summer.
Posted by: Vince
This one came as a little bit of a surprise to me actually as until now these had passed me by, I just received an email from Sony telling me that they have just officially announced their first entry in to the Android tablet market with not one but two tablet models cleverly named the S1 and the S2!
The S1 is a fairly conventional tablet design with 9.4″ screen, the S2 on the other hand, is somewhat more unusual with two 5.5″ screens in a folding arrangement which has a Nintendo DS look about it.
Rumour has it that they will both run on the Tegra2 chipset but we’re just waiting for the official specs to be sent through to use before we post them.
Full press release follows.
As you may have already heard, the Mobile Tech Addicts podcast has been nominated for an award. As our host Gareth is from Northern Ireland, the podcast has been selected as a finalist for the Northern Ireland Social Media Awards 2011. Up against such local commercial bodies as UTV, CoolFM, City Beat and Talk Back out little podcast is small potatoes when compared to those. If you enjoy the podcast, why not just give us a quick vote and influence your friends to do the same.
We all know that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of different cases available for the iPhone 4 and they all offer varying degrees of protection. Perhaps none offer as much protection as the Innopocket waterproof case for the iPhone 4, not only does it protect the iPhone from water but also dust and shock thanks to a robust polycarbonate internal shell and and external silicon jacket. It therefore is guaranteed waterproof to the international standard IP68.
This molded polycarbonate inner shell is rigid and crush proof making the case durable and strong. The silicon jacket and its dump out corners will further protect your iPhone 4 from accidental drops. Amphibian is the ideal solution for all outdoor users. – Innopocket
Despite the layers of protection you can still use the buttons, touchscreen and even the camera. The Amphibian case allows you to use the iPhone as an under-water camera!
Take a look at the video below to see how it all works.
According to some heavy hitting IP experts Google’s Android operating system may in fact violate the GPL (General Public License) terms of the Linux kernel that it is based upon. This is a massive claim and if it has any legs could be far worse than the wrangle between Oracle and Google over their Java usage.
No Linux lawsuit has been filed yet, and there’s nothing to say that it would be for sure but it’s potentially disastrous for Android.
The Linux kernel is open source and freely available, however there are strict licensing terms relating to its usage. For example, if you use and alter the open source Linux kernel you must also offer your software under the same open source agreement as the original work.
According to NoSoftwarePatents campaign founder Florian Mueller:
"Google copied 2.5 megabytes of code from more than 700 Linux kernel header files with a homemade program that drops source code comments and some other elements, and daringly claims (in a notice at the start of each generated file) that the extracted material constitutes ‘no copyrightable information,’"
Via FOSS Patents he writes:
To eliminate the risk of a collapse of the Android ecosystem and navigate around copyleft, the misappropriated Linux code would have to be replaced. The only real viable alternative is a library called glibc (GNU C library). That library is the industry standard and is used by Android’s major mobile Linux competitors, MeeGo and WebOS.
This could be a huge shakeup to the Android platform. Watch this space!
Posted by: Matt
What do you get when you marry a SlingBox with a Freesat+ HD box? The EchoStar HDS-600RS is a HD set top Freesat+ box with built in SlingLoaded capability which offers TV anywhere feature and access catch up & connected TV apps such as BBC iPlayer. This unique feature allows you to control your digital entertainment remotely throughout the home, at work, on the train or on holiday – so wherever you are your entertainment is available at the touch of a button.
The HDS-600RS includes a 500GB hard drive for recording and later playback and thanks to the dual LNB’s you can record one channel while watching another or record two shows at the same time.
The SlingPlayer app is available on iPhone, iPad and Android as well as PC and Mac so you can pretty much watch anything you’ve recorded from anywhere!
It’s always a scramble to get out of town at Easter, with millions of people hitting the roads and airports. However, GPS, location based services and apps are making the journey a lot easier. Now we can receive up-to-date traffic information or find the best route from A to B after we’ve left the house, without having to buy one of those over-priced petrol station or city maps that are virtually impossible to fold back into a neat little shape. So, here are a few of our favourite apps that help you get your bearings on where you are.
All of the below apps are free to download so why not give them a try.
With the HTC Flyer’s release date creeping closer HTC have uploaded a rather nice video on their YouTube page demonstrating the best features and benefits of the forthcoming tablet.
The video really highlights the use of HTC Scribe Technology (stylus) and after watching the video this feature is really growing on me.
You can see the video after the break along with a reminder of its features.
Are you going to get one?
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