News

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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Woman Sues Mall after CCTV captures her falling in fountain

Ok this isn’t the kind of story you would normally get from us but when I saw this on CBS News it made ma laugh so much I had to share!

The woman was walking through the mall where she works texting on her phone as she went, not looking where she was going falls head first in to one of the mall fountains. This was all captured from more than one CCTV camera and the security guards monitoring found it so funny that they decided to post the video online.

Now the woman as come forward and is threatening to sue the mall as she claims that the security folks should have come to her rescue more rapidly and should also not have released the video. Not sure why she feels that the mall is negligent for her own daft mistake but what makes this story funnier, I think, is that no one even knew who the wamon in the video was until she came forward and now she is claiming that she is embarrassed! LOL

Video after the break.

HTC Smartphone profits rises 160%

HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone maker that has emerged as a major rival to Apple’s iPhone, saw net profits rise 160% during the October to December quarter compared with a year earlier.

HTC was the first smartphone maker to use Google’s Android operating system.

Net profits rose to New Taiwan dollars 14.59bn ($500m; £315m) on the back of NT$104bn sales.

The company sold 24.6 million phones last year, more than double the 2009 figure.

Growth is expected to remain rapid this year, with the company predicting some 8.5 million handsets to be sold during the January to March quarter this year.

The company will also start making tablet computers to challenge Apple’s iPad.

"It’s a new market with many competitors, and we don’t want to rush into it," Peter Chou, HTC chief executive, said.

"We hope the product we eventually unveil will be one that meets consumers’ needs."

Via BBC

Posted by: James

Samsung teases us again

Those cheeky teasers at Samsung have got the media all in a kafuffle again. Like Samsung did with the Galaxy Tab they have updated the Samsung Unpacked website to show an image of the Galaxy S sitting beside what they will be unveiling at Mobile World Congress next month.

They say ‘”Something big is coming” so one can only presume it is the successor to the Galaxy S.

Our man Gareth will be at MWC to cover all the new announcements and gets hands on with the devices so you had better be ready for some good stuff from February 13th.

Posted by: James

Does this crush the 7 inch iPad rumors?

There have been plenty of rumors about whether Apple will release a 7 inch version of the iPad and like always the company have been very tight lipped about the whole thing.

Apple COO Tim Cooks recently spoke on the subject of Android and Windows tablets and like Steve Jobs has said previously he characterized the small sizes and lack of optimization as “bizarre”.

[With] the variety shipping today, the OS wasn’t designed for a tablet; but Google said this," Cook said. "So you wind up having the size of a tablet that’s less than reasonable, or one that’s not even a real tablet experience. It’s a scaled-up smartphone; that’s a bizarre product in our view. Those are what is shipping today. If you do a side-by-side with an iPad, some enormous percentage [is] going to pick the iPad. We have no concern there."

On the subject of Windows tablets Cook said that current designs are “fairly big, heavy and expensive, with weak battery life. They also need to have a keyboard or a stylus for input and were largely irrelevant in the market. From our point of view and what we’ve seen, people just aren’t interested in them.”

I cant see Apple turning round and saying that a 7 inch in now not bizarre so maybe we should put the rumor to bed?

Posted by: James

Blackberry Playbook to have no Calendar and Email?

Playbook’s Sr. Product Manager Ryan Bidan seems to stand behind the decision that the device will be shipping without independent calendar and e-mail features. He states the device is a “great standalone tablet” with just using WIFI and “this is not a device that is reliant on a Blackberry.” This still doesn’t address the concerns of the Playbook missing many of it’s popular BlackBerry features such as calendar, e-mail, blackberry internet and messenger services without a tethered BlackBerry phone.

This may be addressed in firmware update after the launch of the device but would have prevented the 1Q 2011 release date of the Playbook to include these on day 1 without being tethered to a Blackberry. Another consideration is that keeping personal data secure to the phone allows for non-secure data to be on the Playbook and this added benefit may be to prevent the data from being publicly accessible which has long been one of RIM’s strongholds in the market of keeping data secure.

Posted by: Gareth