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Dell as a brand name is known by almost everyone for their value for money desktops and laptops. Some may have even heard of Dell’s ‘phonelet’, the Streak, though it’s sales figures weren’t a major success. But a mobile phone with a Dell logo slapped on isn’t something you see often in the UK.
The Venue Pro is Dell’s newer and more promising offering into the mobile market, one which has caught the eye of many thanks to it’s rather unique form factor. There is less than a handful of smartphones with a sliding portrait qwerty, none of which offer Windows Phone 7 like the Venue Pro. Despite being announced as one of the original launch phones of Windows Phone 7 last year, it has been subject to countless delays and only very recently has the long awaited Venue Pro been available.
So was the Venue Pro worth the delays and consequent heartache? Read on to find out.
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
Samsung have already put out countless Galaxy branded phones, most notably the super popular Galaxy S. Running with the popularity of the Galaxy brand name, the newest edition (also known as the S8530) has just been pushed to shelves. Although it may be newer, the Galaxy Ace technically slots in below the Galaxy S, looking to cater for the fierce mid-range smartphone market. Despite having a middling price tag, the Ace stacks up quite favourably in the specs department – an 800MHz processor underneath a 3.5 inch HVGA touchscreen, 5MP camera and Android 2.2 is already sounding good.
Despite being yet another Android phone, it does look to be a hidden gem in the sea of droids currently available and with it’s reasonable pricing, will it continue the Galaxy trend by selling in droves?
Read on to find out.
RIM’s upcoming tablet runs a new QNX based operating system which looks promising, but the initial lack of apps is a concern. For RIM, they’ve taken the measure to alleviate it by supporting Android apps as well as BlackBerry Java apps. This means Android’s 200, 000 apps (and counting) could be available on the PlayBook.
There are a few catches though – the apps have to be ported over (apparently very quick and easy) and you’ll have to run them through an “app player” first. In the PR, only Android 2.3 applications are mentioned, but even so we’re looking at a plethora of Android apps that will be available on the PlayBook at launch. Great news for those waiting for the PlayBook.
Click through for the full press release.
RIM have let us know that the inevitable update to BlackBerry’s OS 6 will be coming this Spring, and a sneak preview of what’s coming will be shown off at BlackBerry World in May. Perhaps even more exciting than an imminent update is that RIM are calling it a ‘major upgrade’ over what OS 6.0 currently offers on the Torch 9800 and Bold 9780. Some may have dismissed OS 6 already, but for those of us who do use it, we all know there certainly are things that can be improved.
That’s more or less what we know at the moment, but hopefully we can share RIM’s excitement when this rolls out – stay tuned!
Posted by: Vince
The first of Cisco’s Flip camcorders brought about a whole new section to camcorders – that Flip Video camera was small and simple to use, and since then many other manufacturers have released their own ultra portable camcorders. This new Flip Ultra HD builds on the success of the Flip Ultra with new features such as HD recording and image stabilisation, while keeping a very similar design. Other notable features include recording at 50 frames a second which results in much smoother video than you’d find on a high end HD capable smartphone, plus the integrated flip out USB port that’s now on every Flip.
There are two versions, both available from Dabs.com, a basic model with 4GB of inbuilt storage and one with 8GB that packs a few extra features, and it’s that one we have for review today. Is it good enough to warrant carrying yet another device on your travels? Read on to find out.
The Xperia X8 was unboxed a good few months ago, but now here is the review with one small but important difference. It’s now running the 2.1 Éclair update which may not be the latest but it’s still better than 1.6 was. That has now brought it up to scratch with other options for cheapish midrange Android handsets, but it’s not alone – the likes of the Wildfire and the San Francisco sell like hotcakes, a trend which Sony Ericsson would no doubt like the X8 to follow.
The X8 slots in somewhere in-between the daddy X10 and the X10 mini & mini pro but with specs more like the minis, its actually a very similar experience but in a slightly larger form factor and that could well be a good thing. The X10 minis received excellent reviews with the main criticism that it was too small – but the X8 is the answer to that call.
Does it have enough to compete? Read on to find out!
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of it before, but the folks at N4BB.com have landed themselves a suite of images of the new yet-to-be-announced ‘Bold Touch’ – running on OS 6.1, it has a 2.8 inch VGA touchscreen, magnetometer, accelerometer, 5MP camera, and a Near Field Communications chip that’s all the rage right now. The particular model that N4BB picked up had 6.5GB of inbuilt storage and half a gig of RAM.
Despite retaining the distinctive BlackBerry look, it has a few nice touches that we haven’t seen before such as the glowing trackpad and the carbon fibre back; the overall design clearly takes a leaf out of the old Bold’s book so it should please those Bold 9000 fans that a worthy successor is just around the corner.
Find the rest of the pictures below.
It wasn’t long ago that the latest dual-core processor to join the Snapdragon family was announced – the APQ8060 was revealed to be the brains behind the new HP webOS TouchPad. Their newest chip though is an entirely different beast; the APQ8064 is a quad-core processor capable of scaling up to 2.5GHz! That’s not all – the 28nm design also includes a quad-core Adreno 320 graphics processor, which apparently has 15 times the performance.
That might already be jawdropping, but this is the real kick – the APQ8064 has 12 times the overall performance while drawing 75% less power than the original Snapdragons. Qualcomm have also thrown in some extras too – support for dual 20MP cameras, 3D displays and video recording, PCIe, USB, WiFi, GPS, NFC and almost every other technological acronym you can think of.
The expected launch date of mid 2012 is a long way away, so keep dreaming for now!
Posted by: Vince
Taiwanese manufacturer HTC have acquired the mobile video content specialist firm Saffron Digital for £30 million. Not too long ago, we reported that HTC injected $40 million into online gaming business OnLive, and Saffron Digital is the second major investment HTC have taken recently. Saffron Digital specialises in providing mobile media delivery services, with high-profile customers including T-Mobile, Paramount Entertainment, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
This is quite obviously part of a strategy to boost their software offerings on their smartphones in order to stand out from the ever growing crowd of mobile phones. HTC’s CEO Peter Chou said “Saffron Digital has developed an incredible expertise in mobile multimedia delivery. This ability to deliver optimised content in the future will be a key asset as content becomes more and more complex and localised.”
Hopefully we’ll see more content from HTC and maybe even gaming to go with their Sense online portal.
Posted by: Vince
Dell as a brand name is known by almost everyone for their value for money desktops and laptops. Some may have even heard of Dell’s ‘phonelet’, the Streak, though it’s sales figures weren’t a major success. But a mobile phone with a Dell logo slapped on isn’t something you see often in the UK.
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