Author Archive: Ian McGurren

Windows Phone 7’s Xbox Connection – Over 60 games at launch

While many industry pundits are not expecting Windows Phone 7 to achieve the success of iOS, Android or indeed its Windows Mobile forebear, Microsoft still boasts one thing only one other phone manufacturer can boast – a console division.  It seem while Sony’s gaming tie in with any phones is still in the rumour stages, Gates’ guys have unleashed the full weight of the Xbox name to push WP7 into the public consciousness.  Over 60 games have been announced, some from the excellent Xbox Live library including Castlevania, De Blob and Hexic and others from full retail titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell and Halo.  While the quality of the games is still unknown, their pedigree can’t be faulted and could prove to be the trump card MS can hold over Apple and Google with the general public.

See the games here on the dedicated Microsoft site, and watch some of them in action here.

Posted by: Ian

Double your fun – Qualcomm to release 1.5GHz dual-core chips

The power behind many of today’s smarter smartphones, Qualcomm, has today announced its forthcoming MSM8672 dual core 1.5GHz chips will begin shipping in Q4 with the Qualcomm’s Mark Frankel expecting some aggressive manufacturers to have the chips in its devices possibly before Christmas.  The chip is Qualcomm’s second dual core following on from its 1.2GHz MSM8660 already released and is widely expected to be the grunt behind many of next year’s high-end smartphones and tablets.  Interestingly it appears that tablets will benefit greatly from the improved HD handing of the chip, now 1080p capable with HDMI, but how it fares against the ever-growing Tecra chipsets is yet to be seen.  What we do know though is 2011 is likely to be the year of the tablets and dual-core superphones.  Can’t wait.

Posted by: Ian

More tablet madness – now a Wii Tablet?

Not one for being short of peripherals that will clog up bootsales for some years to come, Nintendo’s Wii has gained another oddball implement in a Wacom-style drawing tablet. Coming from THQ, so it’s not a first party add-on, it’s part of a package called uDraw Studio, which features the uDraw Studio software – the art part of the deal and very Mario Paint, Dood’s Big Adventure – a platform adventure controlled by stylus, and family shouting match favourite Pictionary – using the Wii as a pen-and-paper simulator but with 3D board. The device works by having a Wii Remote sat in the tablet itself, so it’s yet to be seen whether this can be put to alternative uses by the hacking community as a bluetooth tablet.

No firm release date as yet but certainly uDraw Studio would be plenty of fun for kids come the Christmas season.

Posted by: Ian

Here Come The Tablets – MSI Slatebook gets official

MSI have today officially announced two tablets at Computex 2010 in Taipei. Both come strapped with 1024×600 10" multitouch displays as is becoming a standard but here the two devices part ways.  Somewhat unfortunately sounding like an anti-flatulence product, The Wind Pad 100 adheres closer to the netbook-in-a-box model with the de-rigueur Atom 1.6GHz processor, 2GB RAM and a 32GB SSD.  Running Windows 7 Ultimate, it also sports 2 USB ports, 3G mobile data, a webcam for social interactivity and a HDMI output for HD video playback (although it’s not know what, if any HD acceleration the 100 has).  The 110 by contrast is an Android 2.1 tablet powered by Nvidia’s dual core Tegra 250, promising HD video playback and a healthy speed.  The 110 has only the 1 USB port but apparently still has the webcam and HDMI out, so will be quite happy pushing out 720p video to your HDTV.  Additionally, the 110 has swappable back plates (including an um, interesting wood grain effect) for the fashion conscious or just clumsy.

The Wind Pad 100 and 110 are expected by the end of the year with retail pricing around $599 and $499 respectively.

Dell reveal low-end Blaze Android handset

Seemingly named by the creators of TV’s Gladiators, Dell’s phones are sounding increasingly ‘extreme’ with Streak, Thunder, Lightning and now Blaze!!  Ok it doesn’t have the exclamation marks a name like Blaze so richly deserves but we can see it does have a small screen (likely 320×240), a surface that is a fingerprint magnet and allegedly Android 1.5!

Whether this is just in pre-production models is unclear but any smartphone with an OS over 15 months and nearly 4 revisions old would be hampered from the beginning.  Even the lowest of low end phones come with at least Donut 1.6 and many applications are beginning to require this or higher.  Alternatively it could even be an ultra-budget handset, somewhat negating the Neolithic OS.  We’ll have to wait though, as there’s no firm release date at present.

Posted by: Ian

#NokiaBox arrives with second message

Earlier this week I mentioned that I’d received a message from Nokia in the London Evening Standard. The message simply read “Big things come in small packages”.

This morning a courier arrived with another package for me, this time a small box from Nokia. When I say small I really mean tiny! Read on to see what was in the box and what my second message says…