News

Samsung teases again before MWC

Those cheeky chaps at Samsung are once again teasing us about what it is they have to unveil at Mobile World Congress in under two weeks. A short while ago we had the new image appear on samsungunpacked.com that led us to believe a sequel to the Galaxy S maybe coming. Now when you hit the site there is a  new video with lots of people holding a mystery phone. As you will see in the video the phone itself cannot be seen as it appears within a glow of bright golden light.

You can see the video after the break.

Angry Birds Rio – Coming Soon

Calling all Angry Birds fans. It looks like we have a new addition coming in the next couple of months. The word on the street is that Angry Birds Rio will be with us in March and this time Rovio in conjunction with 20th Century Fox will release sporting 45 dedicated levels that are based around the new movie Rio, which is released to theatres everywhere on the 15th of April.

The new version will be available for  iOS, Symbian and Android plus with the dozens of tablets that will hit the market this year I suspect Angry Birds Rio will be even more popular than ever.

You can see the trailer for Angry Birds Rio after the break:

Grant for scientists to develop faster broadband in the UK

The University of Southampton’s ‘Photonics HyperHighway’ project, in partnership with Essex and BBC R&D, has been awarded £7.2 million to create new fibre optic technologies that could make connection speeds 100 times faster than your standard fibre optics. The money, along with £10 million from the EU will be spent trying to develop new materials and devices to increase bandwidth for an ever hungry online population.

Apparently, current fibre optic limitations aren’t clear at the moment, though it seems that they’re not as limitless and future-proof as they once were thought to be. Research will begin at the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, and although microfabrication and high-spec nanofabrication mean precisely nothing to me, I’m all for it if it means faster speeds – I crawl along at 1.2Mbps.

Posted by: Vince

BlackBerry CDMA roadmap leaked

The guys over at crackberry.com have got hold of a real beauty. Details of RIMs CDMA roadmap which not only seems to confirm the device leaks we saw last week but also an extra addition – the BlackBerry Curve Touch. Now we clearly don’t have CDMA here in the UK but i would be confident in saying that chances are a GSM version will be made for most if not all of the devices in the leaked roadmap. I know we have not seen a GSM version of the BlackBerry Style but I think that is due to the flip design being much more popular in North America.

There are some device names to clarify and these are below:

• new BlackBerry Bold Touch: Dakota is the GSM version, while Montana is the CDMA version
• next gen Curve: Apollo is the GSM version, while Sedona is the CDMA version
• new Curve Touch: not previously mentioned, Malibu is a new CDMA touchscreen Curve (likely to be a GSM one in the works too of course)

Rather than me pinching all the pictures from crackberry why not head on over there. Kevin has done a great job on this post and if you are a BlackBerry fan you may need a tissue to wipe up the dribble!

Click here to see the post on crackberry.com

Posted by: James

O2 to launch free Wi-Fi for everyone

O2 have very generously announced that their Wi-Fi will be available to all mobile users in the near future and not just O2 customers. Initially 450 venues will be made available for use and these sites will be situated in key venues. Why is it free and what is the catch you may ask? Well there isn’t one as far as I can see. The idea behind the venture is to get people into these key venues.

You can read the full press release with the finer details below:

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Previewed

The so called ‘Playstation Phone’ combines Sony’s portable gaming system with a phone is one of the many tech unicorns that many what to come true. But that unicorn is turning out to be a reality as the people over at Engadget have managed to get an exclusive hands on with the Sony’s Playstation Phone, aka, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. They confirmed that the Xperia Play will have a 4″ 854 x 480 LCD screen that is the same screen that is on the X10 and this screen is powered by Bravia engine for better video playback. But we don’t know if it is powered by the Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU but the clocking range goes from 122.88 MHz all the way up to the now expected 1 GHz.

Pre order the Sony Ericsson Arc

The Xperia Arc from Sony Ericsson has popped up on play.com as available for pre order. If you remember, this new Android device from SE was announced at CES and looks to be quite a beauty.

Play.com have the device  price set at £459.99 which is not cheap but the device is packing some fine specifications. Delivery is expected at the beginning of April but we all know this is subject to change. Will will have hands on with the Arc before release so you may want to keep an eye on the site for our unboxing video and full review. I suspect this device is going to be pretty popular.

You can check out the Sony Ericsson Arc specs and some more images after the break if you need a reminder:

Introducing the HP Topaz WebOS tablet

Precentral.net has managed to come up with specs for a WebOS tablet ahead of the Feb 9th announcement. The Topaz will be black with both the HP and Palm branding. They also intend to get the Beats audio branding on the device as well, at least in the software and likely on the hardware as well. Finally, they haven’t closed the door on carrier branding for the 3G and 4G versions.

None of this is necessarily final but as of right now it looks like it will have:

Sony’s Qriocity cloud based music service makes debut

Sony has just launched its online, cloud-based, digital music service and it makes it debut in Germany, Tokyo, France and Italy.

We first saw Qriocity back in December here in the UK and we all but ignored it initially. However looking at it again recently it does look like it could blossom in to a decent service with the ability to play music from your account on many other Sony systems such as BluRay players, BRAVIA TV’s and the PS3 to name a few.

Although it’s not a free service, 3.99 a month for basic and 9.99 for premium, Sony are hoping that it will rival iTunes and looking at the imagery and feel of the website there certainly or a resemblance there.

Apple’s App Store Gets to 10 Billion App Downloads!

Today is a day that will go down in history. The App store has reached 10 Billion downloads! This is more apps downloaded than people on this earth! Congratulations Apple, but what is next? 20 Billion? 50 Billion? 100 Billion? I hope we can get a bit of rest before you smash through those barriers.

The person who downloaded the 10 Billionth app will win a $10,000 iTunes voucher but we still have to wait to find out who it is, maybe it will be you. Personally, if won I would sell the voucher for $9,000 cash and go crazy in the actual Apple store. Probably won’t but who knows…

Posted by Patrick

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