Author Archive: Gareth

HTC Flyer WiFi priced

In contrast to the recent post of the pricing for the HTC Flyer, PC World have listed the price for the HTC Flyer without the 3G aspect, the Wifi one. Loosing the 3G modem will drop the price from £599.99 to a bargain basement £479.99. This takes into account the drop is storage size also. The 3G listed on PC World’s site is 32GB, whereas the wifi is left with a little 16GB chip in there.

The HTC Flyer is a strong and exciting product but HTC have really pushed the boat out when it comes to the pricing. The Galaxy Tab was also guilty of this and soon we will see Motorola, Acer and LG entering the same price range with their offerings, however the latter three are better spec’d and running a more appropriate operating system. Oh, but they don’t have a stylus.

Posted by: Gareth

Apple Vs Samsung: The legal battle of the century

According to Reuters, Apple Inc are suing Samsung over the look of the Galaxy line. Mobile and tablets “slavishly” copying  iPhone and iPad design. According to Apple "This kind of blatant copying is wrong."

To mark this occasion of momentous nonsense I am launching a competition. The person who can identify the most differences in the devices after the break will receive a special mention on the podcast on just what a keen attention to detail they have.

Samsung Galaxy S Gingerbread update imminent

Another week, another release of a 2.3 update to one of the many Galaxy phones. Samsung seem to be making good on these updates and it’s a very welcome announcement. The Galaxy S 2.3 Gingerbread update will start rolling out this weekend. I’m guessing that users of other phones and tablets in the Galaxy range will see a release for their device in the near future.

To download the source, head over to the Open Source Developers Center, search for "GT-I9000_OpenSource_GB.zip," download, and enjoy.

Posted by: Gareth

Windows 8 Tablet optimised

Some pictures have been released for what looks to be the Tablet interface. This new UI known as Immersive is a locked down feature, operating at 640×480 and cannot be resized. Something else notable is the addition of an Immersive version of Internet Explorer designed for the platform. Most of the features do not work so I think is safe to say we won’t see this for some time, or if we do it might have that rushed feel some developers like to go for.

iPad and Lovefilm: Awesome

I have no idea if this has been announced elsewhere, but here is some great news!

For Americans, one of the pleasures of the iPad has been the ability to stream movies via Netflix, in the UK we’ve been poorly served since our equivalent, LoveFilm, has been slow to get their act together. The issue has been that iPhones and iPads don’t run flash, and LoveFilm’s streaming service relies on it to work. So your LoveFilm subscription has been useless on Apple iOS devices.

Well down at the Ideal Home Show this weekend, where I often go hunting for a story (?), I brought up this issue at the large LoveFilm stand. The staff were fairly clueless but put me through to someone senior who told me that as part of their expansion plans (which recently involved streaming on the PS3 etc), they will be iPad and iPhone friendly from mid-April. He also mentioned that the number of movies available to stream is about to increase dramatically thanks to the company being bought by Amazon a few months back.

Posted by Gareth

Acer tablets up for preorder on Amazon

Acer’s Iconia Tab A500 10" and A100 7" tablets have shown up for pre-order on Amazon UK, for £449.99 and £299.99 respectively. Amazon has a release date of April 20.
The 7" A100 looks to be the first 7" Android 3.0 Honeycomb equipped tablet to be shipping. Both tablets are listed with Nvidia Tegra 2 Cortex A9 dual-core processors. The 7" A100 has only 512MB of RAM and 8GB onboard storage to go with the significantly smaller form-factor, though it is expected to have a nice WSVGA (1024×600) display. The 10" A500 looks to be the usual 1280×800 display with 1GB RAM for Honeycomb devices. It shall also ship with 32GB of onboard storage Both tablets are wifi-only tablets that also come with Bluetooth connectivity.
Acer Android products have seen limited success compared to the likes of HTC and Motorola in the past. Their lack of support and history poor response to GPL source code requests does not bode well with the end-users, despite their competitive pricing schemes.

Posted by Gareth

New version of the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro pics appear

Sony Ericsson will soon be launching a new smaller devices with a keyboard. Another crop of images have surfaced showing what looks to be the successor to the X10 Mini Pro. Things look pretty much like they always have, but these new shots confirm they’ll be sticking with a rendition of their custom overlay used on the first generation of Xperia devices (which differs from what’s on the Arc and Play) and will have Android 2.3 Gingerbread at launch. Perhaps this is why Sony Ericsson only announced the 2.3 upgrade for the X10.

Posted by Gareth