News

A Google Nexus Tablet?

This is an interesting rumour, in which Google’s own Eric Schmidt let slip the possibility of a Google branded Nexus-style tablet. According to this latest rumour, Google really is working on some form of a Nexus-Style Google branded tablet, and it may be coming to market as early as the end of Q1 2012. The tablet will be a 7-inch product and is actually designed to offer up an alternative to the Amazon Kindle Fire instead of compete directly with Apple’s iPad series. The rumour-mill further suggests that the pricing will be competitive with Amazon’s product as well, and should retail for around $199.99 in American Dollars, from America.

Right now, this Intel is highly speculative, and in fact, Google Taiwan already released a statement indirectly refuting it. They indicated that Google Taiwan has "never heard about plans of launching an own-brand tablet PC". Of course, this isn’t an outright denial, but we should still take this "news" with extra seasoning. If Google does go this route, they will likely be selling the device at an even greater loss than Amazon, since they would probably make the specs more competitive. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Posted by: Gareth

PRADA phone by LG 3.0 incoming

Clove have the ‘PRADA phone by LG 3.0’ – that’s the official name for it as opposed to the LG Prada phone coming the week commencing 6^th Feb.

You want a phone that can offer you a blend of performance and style and more often than not phones deliver one and not the other, but with the Prada Phone by LG, things are a little bit different.

Prada have worked with LG to produce a phone like no other. Said to be the worlds most stylish smartphone, tailored to a discerning, fashion-conscious audience.

Following a long tradition of aesthetic codes and craftsmanship that is at the heart at all Prada products the Prada phone by LG 3.0 has a Saffiano leather on the back cover which contrasts the chromed metal frame of the phone and its camera.

The phone evokes minimalist functional design and this is reflected inside and out. The Prada phone by LG has unique Prada-style icons on the main menu that compliment the exterior design on offer to you and completes the immersive Prada experience.

You can read more, see full specs and view further images below:

White Galaxy Nexus incoming

Clove have announced that the White variant of the Google Galaxy Nexus should be hitting the selves of the UK week commencing February 6th. If you head on over to Clove you can sign up for further updates.

The Galaxy Nexus is proving to be a big hit with the Android community and Android 4.0 is a great improvement in my opinion.

Having previously manufactured the Google Nexus S, Samsung has once again been chosen by Google to apply its innovative smartphone expertise to its latest handset and this knowledge is married perfectly with the range of new features that Ice Cream Sandwich has to offer.

A range of cutting edge Android features are introduced via the Galaxy Nexus thanks to Android ICS. These include Face Unlock, a means of unlocking the device by looking at the 1.3 MP front facing camera. There’s also ‘Android Beam’, a feature that allows you to easily share contacts, apps, websites and more between two NFC enabled Android devices. Improvements have been made to several of the stock apps, such as camera, calendar and the web browser.

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.

Blaq for BlackBerry PlayBook updated to Version 1.6

If you are a BlackBerry PlayBook owner you will be pleased to know that Blaq has been updated overnight. If you are a PlayBook owner but don’t use Blaq then I strongly suggest you do, as it is by far the best Twitter option for the PlayBook.

Full changes for the update can be seen below:

Nokia Lumia 710 coming soon to Orange

If you are in the market for a new Windows Mango Phone but don’t want the expense of the Lumia 800 then it’s good news as I have just seen the 710 on the Orange ‘coming soon’ page.

I used the Lumia 710 back at Nokia World and while it doesn’t have the same amazing build quality of the 800 it is still a real beauty with interchangeable back covers that the youngsters will love.

Specs wise it is pretty decent too, with a 3.7 inch display, 5 megapixel camera, HD video recording and not forgetting Nokia Drive so free satellite navigation.

You can see full specs below:

BlackBerry PlayBook price drop

If you are in the market for a 7 inch tablet the BlackBerry PlayBook may well be worth considering. At most UK retailers you can pick up the 16GB model for only £169.

Worth baring in mind though is that at the moment you can only take full advantage of all its features if you have a BlackBerry Smartphone, but luckily here in the UK millions of you have.

The price drop is down from £399 so quite a saving. With version 2.0 of the QNX powered tablet software on the horizon we also mustn’t forget that Android applications will be supported soon.

If you are a regular reader of our site, or listen to our podcast, you will know I still love my PlayBook and it is my tablet of choice.

Why not pop into Carphone Warehouse, Currys, Dixons etc and see if you can get a test drive. I think you may be quite pleasantly surprised.

You can read our full BlackBerry PlayBook review here.

Posted by: James

Google Nexus S for a bargain price

The Nexus S may well now have been overshadowed by the Galaxy Nexus but if you are after some Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, then Carphone Warehouse have the Nexus S sim free for only £199.95!

I picked one of these up a few weeks ago now and to be honest it has replaced my iPhone 4.  The Nexus S does come pre loaded with Gingerbread but the ICS update has already started rolling out and you can force it on anyway. Samsung made two versions of the Nexus S. One with a Super AMOLED screen and one with a Super LCD. I’m not sure which version is the one at CPW but either way it is a super deal.

If you are looking for a New Year bargain then I think this one is a real beauty. Go on, treat yourself.

You can see the full spec below along with our unboxing video.

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

More on Nokia’s Lumia 900

We looked at the new Nokia Lumia 800 a few weeks ago and rumours of the Lumia 900 have been rife for weeks. Said to be a larger version of the Windows Phone 7 powered Lumia 800 but with a 4.3″ display coming in as the flagship WP7 handset.

No official news on the Lumia 900 as yet but a few new interesting tit-bits have surfaced of the last day or so. The chaps over at Pocket-lint have uncovered some interesting looking marketing material.

The leaked images, discovered just before Christmas were billed as the Nokia Lumia 800 coming in an array of new colours – yellow and white if you are interested.

However Pocket-lint believes, on closer inspection, that the marketing images found by French site MonWindowsPhone are in fact of the Nokia Lumia 900, not the Lumia 800.

Head over to Pocket-lint to see more.

Posted by: Matt