Archive for 2012

What we expect from Google I/O

Google’s developer conference, Google I/O, will begin tomorrow and there are some high hopes for this one. The conference has become just as much of a PR media announcement hub for Google as it is a tool for developers. Not only that, but it keeps getting bigger. This year, the conference will go on for three days instead of the two days of previous events. The stakes are high for Google’s Android, especially in the tablet arena. Smartphones using the OS have risen to dominate the world market, but Android tablets have struggled against Apple’s iPad. Still, Google I/O is more than just Android, and there are a host of other interesting things we expect to see from Google. In fact, we thought it might be interesting to share a list of the many things that could conceivably show up at the conference this year. We’ve done our best to cull as much info from the web as possible to highlight everything that we might see. Some of it could simply be wishful thinking, but some of it has already been rumoured for quite some time. Here’s a taste of what might potentially be at Google I/O this year.

The Nexus 7 Tablet leak

The next, highly anticipated, tablet on the radar is Google’s offering known as the Nexus 7 tablet. For sometime the rumour mill has been muttering that Google is planning to release a tablet that bears the Nexus branding and Asus is touted to be the manufacturer. An announcement is expected to come at Google I/O this week.

Gizmodo Australia claims to have obtained a training document for the Nexus 7 tablet. The document gives us a nice rundown of the specs in question. As the name suggests, the Nexus 7 will have a 7-inch IPS display with a 1280×800 resolution, 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 processor, GeForce 12-core GPU, 1.2 megapixel front camera, 1GB of RAM and NFC support. Sounds good? It all comes in at a rather tasty price starting at $199 for a 8GB storage model and $249 for a 16GB model. Nexus 7 will run the next version of Android called Jelly Bean, Android 4.1.

Those specs might be quite hard to stomach with that price tag attached and there is much scepticism that this cannot be correct, however bear in mind that Asus have been selling their Transformer devices at cost and gaining the profits from the added peripherals released alongside. This as proved to be an interesting and successful move especially when compared to Samsung’s premium mark-up on every tablet.

With a Google branded tablet out in the wild receiving updates as soon as Google is ready to push them out, lacking manufacturing and network tinkering, we might be seeing something of a hit right here and there will be little excuse for a household not to have one. In saying that, Asus will no doubt see a dip in sales of their own devices or could this be the main reason we have not seen the release of a 7″ tablet from Asus just yet?

Posted by: Gareth

Samsung Galaxy S III official car dock available tomorrow from Clove

If you purchased the Samsung Galaxy SIII and you drive a car you may well be interested in picking up the official car dock.

Clove will have the accessory in stock tomorrow so head on over and get your orders in quick.

Features of Official Vehicle Dock – Samsung Galaxy S III

• Vehicle mounting kit for the Samsung Galaxy S III
• Secure holder
• Robust suction cup
• MicroUSB car charger
• Official Samsung accessory

Order here.

Posted by: James

The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TJ700 debuts

Asus has been pretty busy of late creating the long-rumoured Nexus 7 tablet (to debut at Google I/O next week), the ASUS Padfone, and the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700.

Each one of the devices is exciting in it own right. The Nexus 7 is obviously generating the biggest headlines at the moment as there is a lot of mystery and speculation regarding it’s release. ASUS and bloggers have given up a lot of info about the Padfone and there are plenty of videos and opinions of their phone/dumb terminal combination. The third device hasn’t really settled on a radar yet, until now. As yet the Infinity has no official information about an upcoming launch. However, a presentation video for the TF700 just surfaced, giving us hope that the launch of the sleek transformer is indeed just around the corner.

The unlisted video was leaked by a redditor, who calls it a “launch video”. Not exactly the most reliable source, but the video does fit nicely with the other information we got so far on the TF700.

Flipboard now available to all Android users

Flipboard is an application that hasn’t been around for that long but is an app that has attracted a lot of positive attention in its short life. I would say that the reason for this is the fact that you can synchronise all of your social networking accounts into one easy and very cool place to look at in your own time.

Flipboard is laid out just like a newspaper but in ‘Flip’ format which means that instead of turning pages you simply swipe up/down to view the next page. It is an app that you can customise day-by-day if you so wish because you can choose what sections of news and information you wish to view whenever you want to. For example I could choose to view my twitter account, technology news and T3’s specific news and nothing else if I wanted.

The reason that I am explaining the app to you is because although originally this was only available on Android via the Samsung Galaxy SIII on its release, it is now available to absolutely everyone from the Google Play store.

You can see some further screen shots and the download link below: