News

Join the hunt for the Xperiabots

Just a reminder that the Xperiabots have escaped and Sony need you to find them. What’s in it for you? Prizes! If you find a Xperiabot, which could be anywhere in the UK or online, just take a picture of it or scan its QR code and upload the code to the Sony Facebook page. You could win Xperia NXT handsets, movie premieres, DJ sessions, gig tickets, and loads of other ‘money can’t buy’ prizes.

You can follow the action on Twitter and there is also a short video explaining about the Xperiabots here.

In addition you may want to keep your eyes peeled next week. We may just have a Xperia phone to giveaway ourselves.

Posted by: James

Upgrade to 76Mbps broadband from Sky

The prospect of super-fast broad band is so tantalising but if, like me, you are stuck with a slow broadband connection you may want to look away now.

Sky have just announced that they are to make up to 76Mbps broadband is available to new and existing Sky customers. However, you’ll have to live in an area covered by the fibre optic network (which I’m not grr)

The satellite broadcaster launched the product in April, but it was initially available only to new subscribers who did not already have Sky Fibre or Sky Broadband.

However, the company has now revealed that everyone can sign up for its fastest connection. "All our broadband products are open to all customers covered by Sky’s network," a Sky spokeswoman told ZDNet UK.

The up to 76Mbps proposition hit the market at the same time as Sky’s up to 38Mbps product, with both of these packages supported by BT’s fibre-to-the-cabinet infrastructure.

More than ten million homes and businesses across the UK are currently served by BT’s fibre broadband networks.

The telecoms giant is aiming to increase this coverage to two-thirds of properties by the end of 2014 under its £2.5 billion national rollout.

Posted by: Matt

Win some goodies with the Sony Xperiabots

Starting next Monday Sony are launching a new campaign that will see thousands of ‘Xperiabots’ released around London and Manchester. They are the small robots featured in Sony’s TV advert.

If you manage to capture one of the Xperiabots you can win one of a range of prizes just by uploading the alpha numeric or QR codes to the Sony Mobile Facebook page. Simples.

The prizes on offer are:

• Latest Xperia NXT Series handsets
• Sony 4-Screen packages 
• Tickets to movie premiers
• DJ sessions
• Tickets to gigs etc

Make sure you head on over to the Facebook page and ‘like’ Sony Mobile.

Posted by: James

Mobile Tech Addicts Podcast 175: A Game of Cat and Mouse

Gareth is joined by James to debate the recent announcements of BlackBerry and the outcome of the Apple vs Samsung/Google in the patent war. There is an ingenious solution to all your problems with the Nexus 7 and cracking a competition!

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Apple take down Google and Samsung in the patent war

In a stunning decision late Friday, Android (and especially Samsung) has been dealt a potentially serious blow by the on-going patent wars with Apple. US District Court Judge Lucy Koh rendered a decision in favour of Apple’s injunction to block sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the United States. The patent at issue has to deal with database mining capabilities in Apple’s Siri voice assistant. Here is a quote from the Judge’s ruling,

"Apple has shown that the ‘604 Patented feature is core to Siri’s functionality. Accordingly, the court finds that Apple has adequately established the requisite causal nexus between Samsung’s alleged infringement of the ‘604 Patent and Apple’s risk of suffering irreparable harm. In sum, Apple has shown a likelihood of establishing both infringement and validity."

This is the second time this week that Judge Koh rendered a decision in favour of Apple’s injunctions versus Samsung. Earlier in the week, Judge Koh also ruled in favour of Apple’s injunction to stop sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States. In that case, Apple already posted a $2.6 Million Dollar bond to block sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. This is done to pay for legal costs and potential damages in case Apple’s injunction loses on appeal.
In this patent infringement case against the Galaxy Nexus, Apple must post a $95.6 Million dollar bond before the phone is blocked for sale in the United States. That will likely happen sometime early next week.
Here is a quote from the Yahoo article detailing responses from both Google and Samsung,

BlackBerry 10 delayed until Q1 2013

It isn’t a good day today in the RIM camp. As well as holding an earning call to announce its first quarter of 2012 results Research in Motion announced that BlackBerry 10 would not launch in Q4 as stated but instead in Q1 2013.

Many will be disappointed by this news but RIM need to ensure that they get the new operating system 100% right.

With sales down the company are going through some major restructuring, however CEO Thorsten Heins is confident that BlackBerry 10 will be worth waiting for.

You can see the full press release below:

Carphone Warehouse to stock the Nexus 7

Carphone Warehouse have today confirmed they will indeed be selling the Nexus 7 tablet from Google next month. They have said the Nexus 7 will be priced at £199.99 standalone or for free on a tethered contact. I presume this means they will only sell the 16GB version.

Commenting on the launch, Graham Stapleton, Chief Commercial Officer at Carphone Warehouse, says, “Consumer demand for tablets has exploded in just over two years since the launch of the first generation iPad. The wide range of devices now available means that consumer choice and buying power is stronger than ever. Google clearly believes that there is further scope to grow the market and the competitively priced Google Nexus will serve to make tablet devices more accessible to customers. 

“The meteoric rise in the popularity of tablets can be attributed to changes in the way we are using the internet, managing relationships and consuming media. Our lives are more connected and ‘always on’ than ever before. It’s all about convenience; people don’t want to have to go to a desk and sit at a computer to surf the internet, do some online shopping, chat with friends or update a Facebook status – tablet devices lend themselves perfectly to all these activities, all from the comfort of the sofa. Whilst laptops have catered to this need in the past they are slightly cumbersome and awkward; tablets offer the ideal solution and represent the direction home computing is likely to take in the future as demand for clunky home desktop PCs decreases.”

Google Nexus features a 7 inch screen, quadcore processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB memory. It will be the first (and only for the next four months) tablet to run the new Jelly Bean operating system.

Posted by: James

The Nexus 7 tablet confirmed

Over Google I/O today the Nexus 7 tablet has been announced and it was pretty much what we expected to see.

Manufactured by ASUS the new 7 inch tablet running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will go on sale here in the UK for £159 for the 8GB version and £199 for the 16GB.

Under the hood of the Nexus 7 is some sweet stuff. This includes a Quad-processor with a Tegra 3 12-core GPU. Weighing only 300g and combined with a battery that will support up to 9 hours of video playback I think Google’s new creation may be quite popular.

Although we get WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC there is no 3G modem on board which I know will disappoint many. However, for the price, the Nexus 7 is a real bargain.

Posted by: James

What we expect from Google I/O

Google’s developer conference, Google I/O, will begin tomorrow and there are some high hopes for this one. The conference has become just as much of a PR media announcement hub for Google as it is a tool for developers. Not only that, but it keeps getting bigger. This year, the conference will go on for three days instead of the two days of previous events. The stakes are high for Google’s Android, especially in the tablet arena. Smartphones using the OS have risen to dominate the world market, but Android tablets have struggled against Apple’s iPad. Still, Google I/O is more than just Android, and there are a host of other interesting things we expect to see from Google. In fact, we thought it might be interesting to share a list of the many things that could conceivably show up at the conference this year. We’ve done our best to cull as much info from the web as possible to highlight everything that we might see. Some of it could simply be wishful thinking, but some of it has already been rumoured for quite some time. Here’s a taste of what might potentially be at Google I/O this year.

The Nexus 7 Tablet leak

The next, highly anticipated, tablet on the radar is Google’s offering known as the Nexus 7 tablet. For sometime the rumour mill has been muttering that Google is planning to release a tablet that bears the Nexus branding and Asus is touted to be the manufacturer. An announcement is expected to come at Google I/O this week.

Gizmodo Australia claims to have obtained a training document for the Nexus 7 tablet. The document gives us a nice rundown of the specs in question. As the name suggests, the Nexus 7 will have a 7-inch IPS display with a 1280×800 resolution, 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 processor, GeForce 12-core GPU, 1.2 megapixel front camera, 1GB of RAM and NFC support. Sounds good? It all comes in at a rather tasty price starting at $199 for a 8GB storage model and $249 for a 16GB model. Nexus 7 will run the next version of Android called Jelly Bean, Android 4.1.

Those specs might be quite hard to stomach with that price tag attached and there is much scepticism that this cannot be correct, however bear in mind that Asus have been selling their Transformer devices at cost and gaining the profits from the added peripherals released alongside. This as proved to be an interesting and successful move especially when compared to Samsung’s premium mark-up on every tablet.

With a Google branded tablet out in the wild receiving updates as soon as Google is ready to push them out, lacking manufacturing and network tinkering, we might be seeing something of a hit right here and there will be little excuse for a household not to have one. In saying that, Asus will no doubt see a dip in sales of their own devices or could this be the main reason we have not seen the release of a 7″ tablet from Asus just yet?

Posted by: Gareth