Author Archive: Vince Chan

Samsung Galaxy Tab arriving November 1st

Samsung’s highly anticipated Galaxy Tab is arguably the first tablet out of the Android camp really worth talking about, and it’s not long now till we can play with it too. Samsung have named November 1st as the date when the Froyo-laden Galaxy Tab will be hitting UK shores, and the second bite of good news is that it will be available from “all major carriers”. Hopefully that will help to curb the extravagant prices we’ve seen thrown around before, and the Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Store Group will also receive stock. How much will you have to give up to get a Tab of Galaxy in your hands? That’s the only question Samsung have left to answer, but hopefully we can expect some sort of carrier subsidising.

How much will you have to shell out for a Galaxy Tab? We’ll have to wait and see.

Posted by: Vince

MS Office for Mac 2011 launches October 26th

Available now for pre-order, the new Office suite 2011 for Mac will be launching in late October, Microsoft have confirmed. The last version released in early 2008 is getting a little long in the tooth, and Microsoft have seen it fit to finally bring it up to date with some notable additions. Probably one of the first you’ll notice is the speed at which the programs fire up – Microsoft claim they have greatly improved the speed not only at start up, but in the program itself. Another new feature is a look similar to the current Windows counterpart, Office 2010 and its ‘ribbon’ menu interface. Entourage is also being replaced with a new Outlook client, though it’s unclear whether it’s actually new or just a rebrand.

However, if you’re desperate for the Office suite and need it right now, you can purchase Office 2008 and get a free upgrade to the newer edition when it’s available.

In true Microsoft style, there will be a plethora of different versions at different price points. The cheapest being the Home and Student Edition is £89.99 for a single user licence and includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The top end Home and Business adds the Outlook email client and, for two licences, rounds off at the top of the range with an RRP of £239.99.

Posted by: Vince

HTC Desire HD ROM ported to numerous other HTC devices

The Desire HD was only announced not long ago (it’s not even been released yet!) but over at xda, they have not only got their hands on the rom, but have managed to port it already to a multitude of other devices, including the HD2, original Desire, Evo 4G, and the Droid Incredible. Yes, we may not have the Evo 4G or the Incredible, but for frustrated WinMo users and their love-hate relationship with HD2, this could be a godsend!

As with all rom flashing, they’re not without risk, and expectedly there are features (like the camera) that aren’t working yet. Given a bit of time though and maybe the release of the Desire HD, we should see the new Sense and the full hardware feature set implemented – for now, consider it just a taster of what’s to come.

For the already excellent HTC Desire, there is more good news – the ridiculously fast boot up time as seen at the launch event in London is now possible on the Desire. Click through for the video.

BlackBerry Torch 9800 now available from Clove

The only way you would have missed RIM’s new flagship device is if you’ve been living under a technological rock, but luckily for you, you can see our unboxing of the BlackBerry Torch here. If you have seen it before and are considering buying one, pop over to our friends at Clove.co.uk where they have now got the 9800 in stock. While it was at pre-order, it demanded a pretty hefty £522.88 inc VAT, but now you can grab one sim-free for £481.75, right on time (if not slightly early!) for the predicted late September release.

Click here to place your order.

Posted by: Vince

Motorola Milestone XT720 finally gets a speed boost

Following the mix up and confusion of the XT720’s processor speed it eventually came out that it was in fact clocked at 550MHz, despite the initial release saying it was 720MHz. Now Moto have come clean with an update that will boost the speed to 720MHz and also bring DLNA support. Yes it’s perhaps not quite as tasty as a dose of Froyo but nevertheless this is good news for the XT720 owners out there.

Here’s the official line from Motorola:

Three launch new Pay As You Go add-ons

The Three network have announced their new top-up reward scheme for Pay As You Go customers. Now, topping up £10 to £25 would net you 3000 texts, as well as 100 to 300 minutes, and 500MB to 1GB internet allowance. You can also buy Add-ons for specific options such as 3000 texts for a fiver. Bear in mind that these are Add-ons which you’d need to convert after you’ve bought the top-up, either by calling 444 or through the My3 site. Topping up any amount would also net you free Skype, WLM, Twitter and 150MB of internet. These last for 90 days, but the Add-ons would expire after 30, but I think it still represents excellent value!

Post by: Vince

Eclair update heading to X10’s this month?

For those of you with any one of Sony Ericsson’s X10 trio in your pocket, this tasty piece of news should be music to your ears. While the rest of the Android world has more or less moved on, the Xperia X10’s has been serving up nothing but donuts for almost a year. Sony Ericsson actually promised to let 2.1 loose before end of Q3, but now we have evidence! An Xperia X10 was found running 2.1 Éclair at their booth at the IFA technology trade show in Berlin. As you can see, it has their UI skin all loaded up, so now the question is when we will see this actually rolling out to users.

Video (in German) after the break.

ARM detail new Cortex-A15 core processor design

Think your shiny new device with an Apple A4, a Sammy Hummingbird or Qualcomm Snapdragon is powerful? Well ARM are back once again to restore that feeling of inadequacy with the ridiculous new ‘Eagle’ SoC; the Cortex A15. Capable of up to 2.5GHz speeds, address up to a terabyte of memory, and with 4 cores (four!) the A15’s 32nm and 28nm fabrication means that these potent little chips are also more power efficient. Sadly, A15’s destined for smartphones will most probably be ‘only’ single or dual core versions at ‘only’ 1 to 1.5GHz. The faster quad-core versions mark ARM’s intentions to break into a bigger market, as these are destined for tablets, cars, set-top boxes and even small servers. It doesn’t stop there either – versions with eight cores or more are possible, though they would only live in enterprise infrastructure solutions. The named licensees so far include Texas Instruments, Samsung and ST Ericsson.

Now all we need are super-batteries to juice these up.

Posted by: Vince

HTC Desire HD and Desire Z all but confirmed for UK release

It seems to  now be tradition that high-profile mobile phone releases should be leaked multiple times before any mention from the manufacturer themselves. Not for the first time, the HTC Desire HD and Desire Z (the Vision) have slipped through the system and have appeared on a respectable British retailer site. The Desire HD steals the spotlight in specification terms, and according to mobiles.co.uk, will have Froyo 2.2 driven by a 1GHz processor, 4.3 inch display, and 720p video recording. This will be announced most likely on the 15th of September at the HTC press event we will be attending. Joining the HD will be the Android qwerty slider, the Desire Z. It’s listed to have a 1GHz processor too, but on a smaller 3.7 inch display and and interestingly, Android 2.1.

Click through to see the shots of their description!