News

Assassin’s Creed for Windows Phone gets a price drop

According to the guys over at WPCentral Assassins Creed has dropped in price and is now $2.99, down from $4.99. The game is not everyone’s cup of tea but has been a huge success on other platforms. Like many Windows Phone apps you can try before you buy but I’m going straight in for the plunge and making my purchase now. Maybe we will bring you a video review later in the week.

Jerusalem, 1191 AD. The Third Crusade between the Crusaders and Saracens is tearing the Holy Land apart.
You are Altaïr, a Master Assassin sent by the Order of the Assassins on a quest to steal the Chalice from the Templars in order to end the Crusades. The fate of the Holy Land depends on you…

Plunge into this direct prequel to the critically acclaimed Assassin’s CreedT, offering rich gameplay and a well balanced mix of stealth, chaotic action, and puzzle-solving exploration in the midst of the fully 3D-rendered, historical Middle Eastern environments of the Crusades.

– Incredible variety of acrobatic moves for a very rewarding gaming experience.

– 6 weapons for both close combat and long-range attacks: swords, daggers, grappling hooks, and bombs.

– Skill-based mini-games put your patience & dexterity to the test: perform pickpocket maneuvers and make informants talk.

– Unique dramatic tension, intensified by 3D cinematic cut scenes and character voices.

– Collect orbs to upgrade health and weapons.

– Highly polished 3D graphics providing full immersion into a true-to-life Medieval Middle East environment.

You can find more details here on the Windows Marketplace.

Posted by: James

A quick heads up and a twist on our Samsung Galaxy S III Review

I’m sure you saw our Samsung Galaxy S III unboxing the other day, if not I do hope you have a good excuse! Anyway, our man Vince now has the device but rather than just doing our normal style of review I decided we would add a little twist to it.

With the Samsung Galaxy S III being dubbed as the Android smartphone of the year I thought it may be a good option to put the GSIII up against the HTC One X which is clearly Samsungs main competitor at the moment.

So the nice people at HTC have kindly sent us another One X and Vince is going to put the two flagship devices head to head in the review.

Which one comes out on top is anyone’s guess and to be honest if you are in the market the decision may just well come down to personal preference.

So Vince has his work cut out this week. If you have any specific questions you would like to put to him of features you would like comparing in the review please feel free to comment in the forum.

Fingers crossed the review (battle) will be live later this week.

Posted by: James

BlackBerry Music Gateway goes on sale

You many remember that when I was at BlackBerry World last month we showed you a video of the new BlackBerry Music Gateway that RIM were demonstrating.

If you are not familiar with the product I will summarize it. Essentially, the Gateway is a small gadget that connects to your TV or stereo system and by using NFC on your BlackBerry you connect your device to it with a quick tap and then control music output and volume controls via the handset itself. Not only perfect for at home but great for parties allowing multiple users to play what ever music they happen to have on their BlackBerry.  I don’t have a UK price as yet but the in the USA the Music Gateway is priced at $49.99 which seems very reasonable.

If you missed my hands on video you can see it again below and we will of course have one of these in for a review ASAP.

Nokia Lumia 710 only £99.95 at Carphone Warehouse

Carphone Warehouse today announces the simple yet smart Nokia Lumia 710 at  a great value price of £99.95 just in time for pay day.

This marks the first time a Windows Smartphone has dropped below £100.  This ‘Pre-pay Pay Day’ deal will be available for the next seven days (1^st – 7^th June) on Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone pay as you go.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is perfect for showcasing personal style. Xpress on covers and a customisable start screen means that users can easily match their phone to their mood. Powered by Windows® Phone 7.5, the device uses ClearBlack technology which cuts glare on the 3.7″ touchscreen. It also has a fantastic 5MP camera, 3G mobile internet and built-in social networks for keeping up with friends.

The Carphone Warehouse Smart Prepay Pay Day offer is available in store, online at www.carphonewarehouse.com or by calling 0800 925 925.

Full specs below:

Win a MOTOLUXE with T-Mobile and Motorola

Motorola and T-Mobile are teaming up with a new and funky app which will see them give away a brand new MOTOLUXE.

Every week for 10 weeks, they are asking people to take part in their ‘What’s your line up?’ app to be in with a chance to win the MOTOLUXE (www.facebook.com/motorolaeurope). 

The app lets you create a ‘Social Graph’ – a cool graphic that shows you who your best friends are on Facebook, brings them together in a beautiful collage and lets you share your graph online. You can find out who you interact with the most on Facebook with the automatic selection button, or choose those nearest and dearest to you via the manual option.

The app is also a fun way of demonstrating the MotoSwitch application that comes pre-loaded on MOTOLUXE handsets. With MotoSwitch, the MOTOLUXE learns who you talk to and which apps you use the most, and puts all that information front and centre. The more frequently you communicate with someone, the bigger their icon becomes!

To get started, click on https://apps.facebook.com/whatsyourlineup/

Posted by: James

Samsung Galaxy S III delays

Set to be one of the best selling smartphones yet, the Samsung Galaxy S III is not off to a great start. Numerous sources are reporting that the pebble blue variant of the device which officially goes on sale tomorrow is now delayed along with the white 32GB version.

Clove have stated that they are expecting stock of the pebble blue GSIII to arrive on June 5th although at present this date is still to be confirmed. They are also reporting a one day delay with the white 16GB version so if you did pre order it looks like you may not receive it until June 1st.

The reason for the delay is not clear but I would imagine there are a lot of very unhappy Android fans out there today.

Posted by: James

Finally. A 22” tablet!

We all feel that the 7″ and 10″ have been covered over and over again. Well,  Viewsonic is planning on introducing a 22" Android ICS tablet at the upcoming Computex conference in June. These tablets will be a new breed of “smart business tablet monitors” and they are expected to be running both Android and Windows 8 when introduced. We think a more apt name is Moblet (Monitor Tablet) since these dimensions are reaching monitor size and Viewsonic is well known in that market. No other specs or details are available at this time but from the looks of the picture it appears that the models will have some sort of kick-stand or base to allow them to be propped up when in use.

Posted by: Gareth

Orange preparing for the launch of the Intel powered Santa-Clara (Codename)

We have known about the Intel powered Santa-Clara for quite a while now but it seems its launch in now imminent. Orange are holding a press event next week for the media to go hands on with the new Android smartphone. Santa-Clara is its codename and the Orange website states that its real name will be revealed at launch.

Pricing is not yet available but if Orange can follow suit with the likes of the San Francisco and Mote Carlo they may be at a real advantage as they were great value for money. The only downside I can see is that it is running Android 2.3 but I expect we will have confirmation on its upgrade to 4.0 at launch.

Specs wise the Santa-Clara is impressive. As well at the Intel processor it sports an 8mp camera that can take ten shots a second, HD video recording, 16gb of onboard storage and all presented on a bright 4.03″ display.

Sounds pretty impressive. Roll on next week.

Posted by: James

Nvidia Kai – Cheap Quad Core!

NVIDIA is working hard to make good on their promise to make $199.99 Tegra 3 quad-core tablets possible. NVIDIA’s VP of Investor Relations, Rob Csongor recently revealed during a recent stockholder meeting that the company is working on what it calls the "Kai" platform. He didn’t go into detail about it, but indicated that it will be a low-cost architecture that will allow for budget priced quad-core tablets. The stockholder meeting is pretty long at about 33 minutes, but we have included it in the source links below. Here’s a quote from the audio:

Quote:

Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we’ve developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.

Source: Nvidia

Posted by: Gareth

HTC announce Android 4.0 road map

The nice people at HTC have published a road map showing us which devices will receive an update to Android 4.0 and when. There are a few of the lower end devices that are not on the list such as the Cha Cha and Wildfire S but overall the support looks pretty good and it is a big list.

And as you will see it is not only recent phones that will receive Ice Cream Sandwich. The Incredible S for example has been around since early 2011 and the same with the Desire S.

Nice job HTC.  You can see the full list below: