News

Motorola Pro Canned, Motorola Pro+ Incoming

Motorola yesterday announced the Motorola Pro+, effectively replacing the Motorola Pro which will not now see a UK release. It is slightly disappointing news regarding the Pro, the situation has chopped and changed somewhat since its announcement at MWC in February, but at least there is a follow up device on its way.

Motorola have been back and forth making a decision whether to bring the Motorola Pro to the UK market. It wouldn’t make sense to launch one handset, only to release a successor shortly after, so the Motorola Pro will not now come to the UK. However, the Motorola Pro+ will come to the UK and is expected to be available late October/early November. You can pre-order the Motorola Pro+ from the Clove website later today. In the meantime, checkout the teaser video and spec sheet below.

Full specs for Samsung Wave 3, Wave M and Wave Y

We posted this morning about Samsungs new bada devices that have been announced at IFA 2011 in Berlin. What we didn’t have at that time was the full specs of the three handsets.
All three devices, born out of Samsung’s heritage in innovation, are powered by Samsung’s own new bada 2.0 platform, which brings together a wide variety of new capabilities including multi-tasking, Wi-Fi Direct, voice recognition and Near Field Communication (optional). It enables smartphone users to experience advanced services such as mobile payment, ticketing and file sharing. 

If you are thinking that one of these new phones may be the right choice for you please see below where you will find the full specifications:

Samsungs Bada 2.0 and new devices – Video

We mentioned last week that Samsung were planning to announce a few new Bada powered devices including the Wane 3, Wave M and Wave W and that is now official. The three handsets will all be powered by Bada 2.0 and some nice improvements have been made to the operating system.

“Smartphones are gaining popularity by the day. The new additions to the Wave portfolio are the first to benefit from the power of our bada 2.0 platform; the full extent of our commitment is clear to see in each device. We’ve produced easy-to-use smartphones that will inspire the market,”

Below you can see more details of the three new devices as well as a video interview with Justin Hong, VP with Samsung Mobile Communications:

Samsung Galaxy W coming to Three – Video

We mentioned yesterday about the four new Galaxy phones that Samsung announced. Three were quick of the mark to let us know that they will be stocking the Galaxy W soon.

Running on a 1.4GHz processor, the smartphone is one of the fastest devices in our portfolio.  It’s great at navigation, web browsing and using lots of apps at the same time.

The Galaxy W has a cool design and a 5MP camera which is great for those wanting to take loads of photos on an ultra-portable phone.  There is also Social Hub, a service provided by Samsung, which gathers all your messages, from Facebook, your work email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and puts them onto one page.  For those of you who haven’t already tried this, Samsung’s Social Hub works great on the new Galaxy W.

You can see a short video about the Samsung Galaxy below courtesy of the Three Blog.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple’s Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”

“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”

Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.

LG announce the Optimus Sol

LG’s latest mid range device, the Optimus Sol as been announced and looks to be a fine addition to their range. It also comes with some pretty good specs. Running Android 2.3 the Optimus Sol is sporting a 3.8? Ultra AMOLED display, at 480×800 resolution,which LG say delivers high clarity that is easy to view even under bright and sunny conditions. Battery life is supposed to be 20-30% better due to a new power system.

The LG Optimus Sol will be available in Europe mid September.

LG Optimus Sol main features:

• Qualcomm MSM8255 processor at 1GHz
• Network: Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), dual-band UMTS (900/2100)
• RAM: 512MB
• ROM: 2GB
• Program memory: 150MB internal
• External memory: 2GB microSD card included
• Rear camera: 5MP with autofocus
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
• aGPS
• DLNA
• Dimensions: 122.5 x 62.5 x 9.8 mm
• Battery: 1,500 mAh

Posted by: James

Advent Vega gets honeycomb 3.2

Though the Advent Vega ships with a version of Android better suited for mid-range handsets than a decent tablet, for its price you really can’t complain. After Honeycomb was first ported to the budget dual-core tablet back in the Spring, the latest release of the OS has been shoehorned onto the slate, complete with native GPU acceleration. There are still some bugs in this unofficial Android 3.2 build, as should be expected, but weighing your options that seems better than nothing. You can check out the ROM and instructions at the the Tablet Roms site. There is a video demo after the break.

Eee Pad Slider detailed

It appears from reports that ASUS may be gearing up to release the Eee Pad Slider in September. Also, the full specs have been revealed:

• Android 3.1 installed, with a promised 3.2 upgrade later
• QWERTY-Sliding Keyboard
• 1280 x 800 WXGA display
• Dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
• 1GB of memory
• 5 megapixel rear-facing camera
• 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera
• USB 2.0, mini-HDMI, microSD card reader
• WiFi and Bluetooth

It will come in 16GB and 32GB "flavours" and will probably go for $400 and $550 models respectively. Asus is also throwing in one year of "unlimited ASUS Web Storage."

Posted by: Gareth

Xperia PLAY to showcase new content and functionality at Gamescom 2011

Here is one for you gamers out there. Sony Ericsson shows a strong selection of games from its ever growing ecosystem of over 150 optimised titles for Xperia PLAY at Gamescom in Cologne. As of result of Sony Ericsson’s ever expanding partnerships with top publishers and leading independent studios, Xperia PLAY now offers a broad and compelling portfolio of content including games of all genres and for all types of gamer.

At Gamescom Sony Ericsson is announcing and previewing a selection of new titles from Gameloft, EA’s Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Dead Space, and the Android premiere of Polarbit’s driving game Reckless Getaway.

Sony Ericsson’s new developer programme “Stand Out” is also starting to bring innovative and award-winning content to Xperia PLAY. As such, Sony Ericsson will be hosting the cream of independent development talent at their booth. Among the titles available to try are Catfish Blue’s Hyperlight, Be-Rad’s Lame Castle and an enhanced new version of They Need To Be Fed from YoYo Games.

Another BlackBerry Press Event

Next Tuesday, 23rd August sees yet another BlackBerry press event being held in Central London. What we will see at the event if unknown although if you are a BlackBerry fan you can probably have a guess as we have seen numerous leaked pictures of more BlackBerry 7 handsets. Then again, it could be something unexpected.

We will be at the event so unless we are given an embargo you can expect some news and hopefully video footage later that day.

Roll on Tuesday.

Posted by: James