Author Archive: Vince Chan

GameCommand Android app for Qualcomm launches CES 2012

Last year saw Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor inside the cutting edge smartphones, which gave them a new class of power ready to be exploiting for gaming. Tegra 2 was new however, meaning most games were not optimized to run on their chipsets. Eventually their Tegra Zone app collected the games that would best show their gaming prowess. This year, Qualcomm are set to release their own take, called GameCommand, showcasing high quality immersive games as well as news feeds to keep updated on the latest gaming news.

It will feature over 100 titles optimised (and some exclusive) for Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, which are already present in high end smartphones today, such as the HTC Sensation and Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play. Find more in the PR, and look out for the app launching January 10th.

Windows Phone Marketplace grows to 50,000 apps

While the Windows Marketplace is the newest major app store, it has managed to receive quite a hefty amount of developer support. At the moment, it’s still nowhere near the giants such as the Android Market or iOS App Store, but both had a jumpstart on Windows Phone. A more useful view would be to see how quickly that 50k milestone was reached – as it happens, the Windows Phone Marketplace got there in just 14 months, which is only beaten by iOS in the mobile app count race. In fact, the number of apps entering the Marketplace in the last 3 weeks has been almost twice that of the weeks before. Well done MS.

Post by: Vince

Nokia Lumia 800 frozen in a block of ice

Here’s something a little different for you – as part of a creative publicity stunt, Nokia have set their latest flagship phone in a giant block of ice, and left it out on the street. The nice twist though is that whoever can manage to get through the ice can keep the Lumia 800 for themselves! If you’re lucky enough to already own a Nokia’s Windows Phone, well, you can rest assured that it’ll survive this winter. Well, that’s until you catch the small print – it’s just a dummy in the ice, which you can exchange for a real one. Either way, it’s certainly an original marketing stunt. Click through for a video of the attempts.

First (leaked) Official Samsung Ice Cream Sandwich ROM appears

The latest major Android refresh was only released on the Galaxy Nexus a short time ago, but Samsung have been busy updating their current devices to Ice Cream Sandwich. A beta release, leaked by a Samsung insider, shows their progress on the Samsung Galaxy SII. Most of the basic functions are working, but with many force-closing apps and random reboots, it’s an unstable release which isn’t recommend to anyone just yet. While it has only showed up so far on the GSII, there will be other devices updated, with the final builds arriving early 2012.I hope. Perhaps unsurprisingly, TouchWiz has made the jump over to Android 4.0 too, and while many are passionate about the stock ‘vanilla’ look, it’s understandable given that many consumers out there are already accustomed to TouchWiz – updating to a completely new look and feel may be somewhat of a shock to some!

See a video of the GSII with ICS in action after the break.

Apple iOS 5 coming 12th October

A taster of what is to come was shown at WWDC a few months ago but today the finer details of what iOS will feature have been revealed. iOS 5 is probably the biggest release yet with a lot of new features, from iCloud to Newsstand. The new OS will be available to download on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch 3G & 4G.

Apple claims there are many minor updates including ones that us users won’t see, but for a quick look at all the (important) new features, click through after the break.

Apple unveil iPhone 4S

After a ridiculous stream of rumours, the iPhone 4S is now official. The first thing to note is that it looks identical to the old iPhone 4, 3.5″ retina display, glass and all, for better or worse. As expected though, it has new internals, namely the dual core A5 chip. With dual core graphics too, performance is supposedly 7 times faster than the A4 in the iPhone 4, and graphically intensive games such as the new Infinity Blade 2 will be industry leading (for now). The battery life is rated at 8 hours of talk time, 14 hours of 2G talk time, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 9 hours of Wi-Fi browsing.

The camera has also been subject to a nice meaty upgrade, up from 5 to 8 megapixels as expected, f/2.4 aperture, and 73% more light on the sensor thanks to backside illumination. There’s also more bells and whistles such as a ‘Hybrid IR filter’ for better colour accuracy, 30% more sharpness, and face detection. It’s also supposed to be faster to shoot the first picture – 1.1 seconds for the 4S, compared with 2 and 2.1 seconds for the Samsung GSII and HTC Sensation. Video recording on the iPhone 4 was already excellent, but that too has been bumped to full 1080p recording, video stabilisation, and noise reduction.

The internals are up to date now, and after all of the iPhone 4 antennagate malarky, Apple have made sure they mention the new antenna which switches between different areas for best signal quality – we’ll see if that’s actually the case when we get our hands on it soon.

Update: The iPhone 4S will come in 16gb, 32gb and 64gb flavors. It will be available here in the UK on October 14th. Pre-Orders start on the 7th.

Post by: Vince

Cards app for iOS detailed

Can’t say that this was one the rumour mill picked up on, but you can’t blame them – it’s kind of bizarre. The short of it is that Apple have a new app called Cards, where you can choose from 21 designs of a greetings card to send. Once customised, Apple will actually create it and mail it to your addressee. Of course, it comes at a price, one that hasn’t been detailed for the UK. We’re not actually sure if the service will be available to us here, but it does seem like Americans can address it to outside the USA.

Is this a way of marketing to your recipient with an Apple branded card, or a genuine desire to make our lives easier? Who knows, but it’ll be available free on October 12th, for the Yanks at least.

Post by: Vince

Apple boasts some impressive numbers

It’s hard to deny that recently Apple have been doing very well in all the markets they compete in, from desktop PCs to music players. At Apple’s keynote today, they showed off some impressive numbers to say the least:

• 6 million downloads of OS X Lion; Macs are no. 1 selling computers in the US
• 23% year on year growth in the PC market vs 4% Windows, with almost 60m users
• 23% of the total PC market share
• Over 300m iPods sold in the last decade, 45m since June
• 16 billion song downloads on iTunes!
• No. 1 selling tablet in world, 95% satisfaction rate, 92% of Fortune 500 companies adopting the iPad
• 250 million total iOS devices, making iOS the number 1 mobile OS, accounting for 61% of the mobile browser market
• Half a million apps on the App Store, 140,00 iPad apps, and 18 billion app downloads

Whether you like Apple or not, it’s clear that they are doing extremely well lately. Well done to them.

Posted by: Vince