News

HTC Wildfire in Black from Orange

While I was pottering around the Orange website today I stumbled upon the HTC Wildfire in Black as coming soon. Now, although the Wildfire has been around for some time now I have not seen it in black anywhere before and I kind of like the look of it.

As listed as coming soon to pay monthly the device will clearly be free, however as of yet there are no contract prices on the site. I am hoping this one may be a bargain.

Anyway, I just thought I would point it out in case you are in the market for a nice little Android device. You can read our full review of the HTC Wildfire here.

Posted by: James

Mac App Store

If you use a Mac you may want to double check you are running the latest version of Mac OS as the App Store is now available to use.

The store works much the same as it does on an iPhone or iPad making downloads quick and simple. There are both paid and free applications available and apps are stored either in categories, featured or top charts.

My personal favorite i have downloaded is Twitter for Mac. It is not too fancy but works like a dream. Classic games like Flight Control and Angry Birds are also in there.

If you have not downloaded you had better. Enjoy.

Posted by: James

Acer annouces Liquidmini at CES

More news from CES, this time from our old friends Acer. Hoping to capitalise on the budget popularity of the Acer Liquid, which we loved by the way, and have announced their new baby; the Acer Liquidmini.

Full details can be found in Acer’s full press release below and as always we’ll be doing out best to get our hands on one to review!

Introducing Motorola XOOM

Motorola are joining the tablet invasion with the Xoom. The 10.1 inch Honeycomb device was announced at CES yesterday and although it was partnered with Verizon Wireless in the States we are expecting a EU version here at some point in the future.

Looking at the specs below I kind of wish I had this now instead of my iPad although we still have to see what Apple will do with the iPad2 later in the year.

Key Features:

• Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) (More information HERE)
• 10.1″ (1280×800) Touch Screen
• 1GHZ Dual core Tegra 2 Processor
• 3G, but upgradable to 4G
• Front facing 2 megapixel front facing camera
• 5 megapixel rear facing camera  with dual LED flash and 720p video capture capability
• 1080p video playback
• 32GB on board user memory
• 1GB RAM
• 802.11n WiFi
• 730g
• 249.1mm x 167.8mm x 12.9mm

After the break you can see the video that Motorola showed at the launch and the official the press release.

BlackBerry PlayBook Demo

Kevin from crackberry.com was lucky enough to get a demo of the new BlackBerry PlayBook yesterday from Ryan Bidan, who is the Sr. Product Manager on the BlackBerry PlayBook team for RIM.

The video gives us another insight into the wonderful world of the PlayBook and as Ryan confirms this beauty is still going to be available in Quarter one this year – Hooray!

See the video and also a reminder of the PlayBooks specs after the break:

Google Android Honeycomb revealed, tablets only

This week it’s CES, and Google have finally come out after endless rumours about the next Android release, Honeycomb 3.0. The major bite of news is that it will only be for tablets – there won’t be a phone, even the Nexus series, that will run 3.0. Phones will stick with Gingerbread and skip to the next release.

Honeycomb’s UI has been reworked for larger screen and higher resolution tablet devices which is good considering that previous versions of Android haven’t really been the most intuitive for use on tablets. Only the browser and Gmail app remain somewhat familiar, with the UI getting a needed overhaul. Hopefully this will mean there will be less compatibility issues that have shown with the same operating system on both phones and tablets, making the overall experience (as well as the UI) much more tablet friendly. Now I’m sure I’m not the only one expecting awesome iPad competitors!

Check out the video of Honeycomb in action after the break.

Motorola Atrix – World’s Fastest Smartphone

Motorola has just walked of the stage in CES where they announced their latest products for release. And literally first of the blocks was the Motorola Atrix 4G. The Atrix has supports a Tegra duel-core 1Ghz processor, 1Gb of RAM, a 4-inch qHD screen(960 x 540), Android 2.2 with Motoblur, 16GB on-board storage with support for MicroSD cards upto 32GB, 1930mAh battery, 5MP camera, a front facing camera, fingerprint login, 4G and it can be put in a dock so you can use the phone much like a laptop or desktop. Tempted yet?

The Atrix will be available on AT&T in the states  but it is also coming to the UK on Orange. Yay! I can’t wait to get my hands on this handset  because of all the awesomesauce mentioned above!

Check out the press release and more images below.

Play Angry Birds fullscreen on a laptop!

Angry Birds has taken the mobile gaming scene by storm, and now our feathered friends have arrived on laptops! Angry Birds is now available for download via Intel’s AppUp store, which is a application store designed primarily for netbooks and laptops. Intel AppUp is available free for Moblin and Windows XP and 7 and Angry Birds is one of many apps available.

Rovio has promised regular free updates just like it’s mobile counterparts with 195 levels already as well as some ‘unique enhancements not found in the mobile version’. That’s just as well at £5.99, making it the most expensive way to get your bird flinging fix but hey, it’s Angry Birds!

Posted by: Vince

RIM demonstrate media on the PlayBook

Research in Motion have released another video demonstrating the capabilities of the forthcoming BlackBerry Playbook. This video concentrates on media and shows you how smoothly the device handles Flash and HTML5 based sites.

As you will see, using Facebook is a wonderful experience using the PlayBook as you can play games without leaving the site and therefore still being able to chat with your online friends.

See the video after the break and please let us know what you think in the forum.

Samsung sells 10 million Galaxy S phones worldwide

The Galaxy S has only been available for around 7 months (since June 2010) yet the superphone with the mammoth spec sheet has reached a global sales total of 10 million. Us Europeans contributed to roughly a quarter of those, with the USA topping it at 4 million. Samsung did set itself a target of 10 million, which has been reached (according to Samsung Electronics) at an average speed of one sold every two seconds!

If you’ve forgotten, the Galaxy S does have a few variants across the globe, but they all share the same basic features like the 4 inch Super AMOLED display and a super speedy 1GHz processor – you can click here to read our views on it.

Posted by: Vince