Author Archive: Gareth

Galaxy Tab 8.9 on sale very soon

The wait seems to be coming to an end. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, the smaller brother of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, was up for pre-order via the Amazon UK site listed at a price of £605.34. The listing shows that the tablet packs a 3G modem inside and has an in-stock date of August 12. This was last week however the pre-order option has since been removed.

With 8.9 inches, Samsung is clearly aiming for not just the right size, but the features to go with. This is something the company failed to do with the original Galaxy Tab.  The device is 8.6 mm thin, 465 grams in weight, and has a 6,000 mAh battery that supports up to 10 hours of video playback, and a platform built specifically for tablets.

Posted by Gareth

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 hitting retailers

Vodafone have it up for pre-order, with no prices listed, however Dixons have it ready for purchase including a list of prices for all the alternate models. Starting at £399 and rising, gradually to £659. The device has a number of different variants, wifi, 3G, Black, White, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB.

Prices aren’t terribly surprising and are priced at exactly that of the iPad 2. I guess this is a sensible move, however, given that most people pay a premium for Apple products it will be interesting to see if Samsung can capture a decent percentage of the market. I guess they can drop the prices and rally up a bit more custom in the months running up to Christmas.

Posted by Gareth

Some pics of the iPhone 5?

Probably is a fake but for now we’ll reserve judgement.  Apparently, on Thursday of last week two cases were revealed for the new generation of the iPhone, how exactly the case manufacturer knew the design is still unclear but they are confident enough in their prediction to start producing the cases ready for the new iPhone.

However, this week it appears Gizmodo, the guys who had the pre-production iPhone 4, posted the pictures below. The device looks real enough and in keeping with current design trends we are observing of Apple. It could, and more likely, be a self-referential joke by Giz to their situation with the iPhone 4 before it’s launch.

I have attached all the images below, including the fabled cases, for your judgement.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer 2 in October?

As we ready our The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer review (for the second time) we find out that ASUS is thinking about their next generation Transformer could be out as early as October.

Not much detail was given on what this updated version of the Transformer will be packing. Speculation is that it will have a next generation quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and possibly the next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is the convergence of Honeycomb and Android for smartphones. Ice Cream Sandwich(ICS) is set to work on all devices such as tablets, phones, Google TV devices, and more. With the success of their first Honeycomb tablet, Google might be giving ASUS early access to ICS as they did with Honeycomb for Motorola. Hopefully ASUS will continue to be competitive with pricing for this new device.

Posted by Gareth

Apple tosses Samsung’s tablet out of Oz

Apple scored a victory in their on-going legal tirade against Samsung. A court in Sydney, Australia ruled in favour of Apple regarding the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The device has now been blocked from advertising and sales within Australia until the courts decide the full patent infringement case. Here’s a quote from the Bloomberg article, Quote: Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, agreed to stop advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and not to sell the device until it wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved, according to an accord reached by lawyers during a break in the hearing.

Should Apple lose its patent infringement lawsuit, it agreed to pay Samsung damages, which weren’t specified. Interestingly, Apple’s Australian claim is based on a U.S. version of the Galaxy tablet, which is different from the one that will be sold in Australia, according to Samsung’s lawyer Neil Murray. Samsung will provide Apple three samples of the Australian version of the computer tablet at least seven days before it planned to start distributing it. There’s no telling when, or if, this will affect any of Apple’s other international cases against Samsung, but it may have repercussions.

Ultimately, however, the final court ruling regarding the similarities and the 10 alleged patent infringements is really what matters the most in the long run. Then again, perhaps Apple has achieved what it really set out to do. Perhaps Apple’s real intentions were never really to "win" the court cases in the first place, and all they really wanted to do is hamper or slow down the momentum of their competitors. It’ll be interesting to see as the drama continues to unfold.

Posted by: Gareth