News

Apple iPad event

We’re just about 5 minutes away from the event starting. It’s action stations and I’m live blogging the event as it unfolds. Refresh this page frequently for updates as we go along!

17:55 – Getting excited now and everyone is being asked to settle and take their seats. Most are doing as they are told!

18:00 – Tim Cook takes the stage, looking remarkably Jobs-like!

18:02 – We’re kicking off with a run down of the post-PC devices that Apple brought to market. Apparently 172 million post-PC devices were sold last year. Accounting for 76% of apple revenue.

18:05 – Apple now has 362 retail stores and 110 million visitors.

18:06 – Video tour of Apple’s latest retail store.

18:07 – Tim’s back and talking about Siri now. Siri is your best friend! Funny thing is, it hates me!

18:08 – Siri now has a Aussie, French and German accent. iOS 5.1 will be rolling out later today including Japan?

18:10 – 100 million iCloud users. 585,000 apps available in the app store, 25 billion downloads.

18:11 – Movies now to be avaialable in 1080p on your new AppleTV with simple streamlined interface.

18:13 – Third-party apps mentioned for AppleTV also! Photostream comes to the device too.

18:15 – The price of the new AppleTV will be the same as the old $99 – bargain! Available from next week and pre-order today.

18:16 – Over 15 million iPad’s sold last quarter.

18:19 – More than 200,000 iPad specific apps in the app store

18:21 – Everyone has been wounding who could possibly come up with a product to be more amazing than the iPad2

18:22 – Tha company is Apple and here is the iPad 3!

18:24 – Yippee, retina display! 2048 x 1536 resolution! Over 3 million pixels 264 pixels per inch!

18:26 – iPad3 to boast a 40% better colour saturation

18:27 – A5X Quad core CPU

18:28 – New feature – iSight camera. 5 mega pixel sensor and 5 element lens (lets hope it’s way better than that iPad2 then!) Image processing built in to the A5X chip!

18:31 – 1080p video recording

18:32 – Voice dictation added to the iPad at last!

18:33 – Built in 4G LTE. Great for those in the US! LTE up to 73Mbps download speed!!!!

18:36 – Demo of photos downloading on LTE 4G in half the time.

– Notice that the design seems not to have changed a lot looking at the photos. Nothing on the physical size and weight as yet.

18:36 – International roaming thanks to the multi-band support. Can even act as personal hotspot if the carrier supports it.

18:38 – But what about the battery life.? For iPad2 we said 10 hours battery life – iPad3 will have the same battery life despite the new CPU and retina display.

18:40 – Physically – 9.4mm thick and 1.4lbs – slightly heavier!

18:41 – $499 for the 16GB – $599 and $699 for the 32GB and 64GB – Adding the 4G adds $130 to the price

18:42 – On sale from the 16th March and pre-orders from today! UK, USA, Japan, France and Germany all on the same day.

18:43 – Same price as existing models then.

18:44 – Existinng apps can be scaled up and rendered on the new display (same as iPhone apps did/do on the iPad)

18:45 – Some awesome game demos now on the big screen in the theatre – console-quality games.

18:46 – Chris Cheung from Autodesk now on stage – starting off by talking about desktop customers. Blah, blah, blah!

18:48 – Talking about sketchbook pro on the iPad – There’s a new engine for ink that "takes advantage of the incredible graphics power of iPad." Can support drawings of up to 100 mega-pixels.

18:50 – Mike Capps, president of Epic Games: demo time methinks. Oooh, Infinity Blade:Dungeons – HDR graphics and tone-mapping. Looks of beautiful lighting and action. "The Unreal engine is unleashing the power of the new iPad."

18:53 – iPad 3 "more memory or screen resolution than either the Xbox 360 or the PS3."

18:56 – Back with Phil:  iWork apps updated to take full advantage of the retina display

18:58 – iMovie updated too!

19.00 – Garage Band updated to include collaboration over wi-fi

19.02 – iPhoto for iPad launched

19.05 – iPhoto includes multi-touch editing and easily share through email, Flickr and Twitter

19.12 – Still talking about all the effects in iPhoto

19.15 – iPhoto will be priced $4.99 and released today

19.20 – Video playing

19.21 -  iPad2 to continue with a $100 price drop – 16GB $399

19.23 – New iPad commercial is being played

19.25 – and thats it – The new iPad it is!

Posted by: Matt

Post Tags: [Apple, iPad 3, iPad HD, iPad mini, iOS 6, tracyandmatt.co.uk]

Apple (iPad) event later today

Today’s press event being held by Apple is just hours away and there’s a hell of a lot of speculation around it. However, one thing seems to be pretty universally accepted; it’s going to be a very important event!

Important, perhaps, in many ways. It will be the first major announcement by Apple since Steve Jobs passed away last year. The host later today is expected to be Tim Cook but I’d imagine we’ll see a variety of Apple execs take the stage for various portions of the presentation.

So we think we are going to see the latest coming of the iPad today. Will it be called the iPad 3? That would be my guess but many others think it could be called the iPad HD because of the expected hi-res or retina display. The new quad-core A6 CPU is also high on the list of guesses along with larger amounts of memory, up to 128GB perhaps.

iOS 6 could well be on the cards. That seems to be coming up in logfiles from various popular websites so it could be that Apple have been testing the OS internally.

How about a mini-iPad? That too has been mentioned on more than one occasion. Personally I think it less likely but not impossible.

The event starts at 6pm UK time and I’ll be covering the highlights live on the site and twitter so be sure to stick check back in on us later.

Posted by: Matt

RIM hold a Twinterview from the House of Commons

Research in Motion are holding a #BBEMEAChat that takes place tomorrow, Tuesday 6th March. Follow the conversation with MP Rob Halfon (@halfon4harlowmp) from 9.30am when he’ll be giving an insight into what goes on inside the House of Commons and how his BlackBerry helps him balance his work and personal life.  

Rob Halfon is the current Member of Parliament for Harlow and was elected at the 2010 general election. He is a big advocate of using social media to keep in touch with his constituents and is a self-proclaimed lover of mobile technology.

You can get involved by asking a question using the hashtag: #BBEMEAChat and follow @BBEMEABusiness.

Posted by: James

Asus might be building the Nexus tablet

So fresh off of the press is a new rumour which Android and Me are reporting on regarding the rumoured Google’s 7-inch Nexus Tablet that would be selling for $199 when it is released, if it actually exists. According to two reliable sources that Android and Me spoke with at MWC 2012, Asus will be the company building the device.

Asus has seen quite the success with the Transformer and Transformer Prime line-up of tablets. We really are not surprised if the rumour is true regarding Asus being the company that will build this Nexus Tablet. Other information about this tablet, which is also rumoured to be coming Q2 2012, is that it will sport a Tegra 3 quad-core chipset which is not really surprising at all. Nexus devices have always been the flagship of Android so stuffing as much good hardware into one is essential.

BlackBerry PlayBook TV commercials

Now that the latest version of the PlayBook software has been with us for a couple of weeks RIM have put together a couple of videos which I presume are aimed for the television at some point.

As you will see below the videos really highlight the capabilities of the BlackBerry PlayBook and focus on the social integration that works so well.

Whether you are a BlackBerry fan or not I urge you to have a go of the PlayBook if you have the opportunity in store. You may well be pleasantly surprised!

You can see the videos below:

Pre order the LG Optimus 4X HD

Clove have dropped us a line today to let us know that the LG Optimus 4X HD is now available to pre order. At £456 including VAT it isnt cheap but you do get a lot for your money. Clove are listing the 4X HD to arrive in June.

The Optimus 4X HD is LG’s first quad-core smartphone, following on from the manufacturer’s introduction of the first ever dual-core smartphone just 12 months ago. Combining NVIDIA’s latest 1.5GHz Tegra 3 with True HD IPS display, the LG Optimus 4X HD delivers PC-like performance in the palm of one’s hand.

It’s not just the power of a quad-core handset that the 4X HD offers, but an HD multimedia experience. The NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor is the world`s only 4-PLUS-1T Quad-Core mobile processor designed for high-level multimedia performance but utilizes a fifth battery-saver core to handle less demanding tasks such as active standby and music playback. When running at full speed, the 12-core graphics processing unit (GPU) in Tegra 3 delivers a visually rich experience and console-quality game playability.

TAT show off some BlackBerry PlayBook funkiness

TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) have been showing off what they do best at MWC this week. The Swedish UI design company were purchased by Research in Motion a while ago and at MWC they have been demonstrating why.

In the following video you can see several BlackBerry Playbook’s integrating with one another in a way I have not seen with any device before. It is truly remarkable.

Whether you are a BlackBerry fan or not you have to see this. It is the cleverest thing I have seen in a long time. I can certainly see why RIM made the acquisition.

You can see the video below:

Rovio and Samsung collaborate with Angry Birds Space

Samsung Electronics and Rovio today announced a collaboration for the upcoming Angry Birds Space game launch.

The leader in smart mobile devices and the leader in mobile gaming have partnered to launch the latest title in the world’s most successful mobile game franchise. As a part of their strategic partnership, Samsung and Rovio will cooperate to promote Samsung’s smart mobile devices and Rovio’s upcoming new game.

The Angry Birds are preparing a rescue mission to boldly go where no bird has gone before, with low gravity environments and brand-new never-before-seen worlds. Working with Samsung and its internationally renowned range of Galaxy smartphones and tablets, Rovio is bringing exclusive content and a fantastic new adventure to fans.

A mysterious new Toshiba tablet appears at MWC 2012

For some reason, Toshiba decided to sneak out a new quad-core screamer of a tablet at Mobile World Congress this year. It’s a 7.7-inch device with a NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-Core processor powering it. The device is called the AT270, and is ultra-thin and blazingly fast! In fact, the guys from SlashGear said it was the thinnest at the show and left them thoroughly impressed. Here’s a list of its specs:

• Tegra 3 quad-core
• 1GB of RAM
• 16-64GB of internal storage.
• Rear facing camera and micro-SD slots
• Barely thicker than the 3.5mm headphone jack
• 1280 x 800 AMOLED HD 7.7? screen – extremely vivid and crisp images

Right now, this one is just a prototype, but looks to be something Toshiba plans to bring to market at some point… hopefully soon.

Posted by: Gareth

QNX powered Porsche 911 at Mobile World Congress 2012

If you missed seeing the QNX powered Porsche 911 at CES last month we now have another opportunity as the car is being showcased at MWC.

The Porsche supports NFC so one touch from the BlackBerry Smartphone will tell the car you are in it and then activate the car options. With the BlackBerry PlayBook mounted on the dashboard you will see that the PlayBook can control media in the car, phone calls and voice recognition for satellite navigation.

If you have not seen the QNX powered Porsche before I suggest you take a peek at the below video as it just goes to show us the power of the operating system and how well it can be integrated into cars.

Now I wonder if RIM will send me one to review?