News

Dell show off dual-core hybrid tablet

Fresh off of the presses from IDF is news of a forthcoming Dell tablet hybrid armed with a dual-core Atom processor.  Hybrid you ask?  Yes it seems it’s another Transformer netbook, allowing you to flip the body and hide the keyboard.  It shows the device running Windows 7 with a selection of big, finger friendly media icons for those not wanting to get PC about things, plus it certainly looks like a capacitive screen of around 10".  Not much more is known yet but it certainly looks exciting and quite powerful compared to other netbooks.

Source – UMPCPortal

More shots after the break:

Blackberry Torch Available for Pre-Order

RIM’s first slider phone, the Blackberry Torch 9800, is now available for pre-order on Vodafone. But it is going cost a small fortune! As for a £20 a month contract you will need to shell out £400 just for the phone! And the only way you can get out of the £400 is by paying £40 a month, and did I mention that all contracts are 24 months? Oh, and to top it off, the data cap is at a measly 500MB on all contracts. RIM and Vodafone really got you by the balls on this one!

But if you still want the Torch after the insane cost, you do get some nice features. Such as a 3.2″ capacitive touchscreen, OS 6 with a real browser and universal search, the famous Blackberry keyboard but in slide format this time and a 5MP camera.

Anyway, if you do pre-order today, you should expect it to ship by September 27th.

Posted by Patrick

[ Post Tags: RIM, Blackberry, Blackberry Torch, Blackberry 9800, OS 6, tracyandmatt.co.uk, Slider ]

Nokia giving N8’s away! (For £35 a month)

No Nokia haven’t fallen on such hard times that they are giving their latest handsets away, but three of the major operators (Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2) have confirmed you can walk out of their doors with a shiny new N8 without handing over a penny.  The catch?  Well, you’ll instead hand over £35 a month to them for the next 2 years so ok, it’s not quite the offer it first appears.  In fact this is right in the mid to high-end handset sweet spot of £30-35 / 24, putting the N8 up against big Android players like the Galaxy S and Desire, but still representing better value than the year old iPhone 3GS.  At that price, it may even have to defend it’s 12mp Symbian^3 OLED screen equipped self against a kicking from the soon-to-be-revealed Windows Phone 7 devices.  This quarter is shaping up to be one of the most interesting in mobile tech for years.

Posted by: Ian

Nokia News

Today is the start of Nokia World being held in London. As well as the Nokia Development Summit on Wednesday the next two days will consist of keynotes from Nokia top smartphone executives, some product info and some hands on time with some new devices.

However Nokia Mobile Solutions leader Anssi Vanjoki has decided to resign which comes as a total surprise.  Although he will work a six month notice this means we could see some changes in the future from Nokia.

This was the official statement:

Eclair update heading to X10’s this month?

For those of you with any one of Sony Ericsson’s X10 trio in your pocket, this tasty piece of news should be music to your ears. While the rest of the Android world has more or less moved on, the Xperia X10’s has been serving up nothing but donuts for almost a year. Sony Ericsson actually promised to let 2.1 loose before end of Q3, but now we have evidence! An Xperia X10 was found running 2.1 Éclair at their booth at the IFA technology trade show in Berlin. As you can see, it has their UI skin all loaded up, so now the question is when we will see this actually rolling out to users.

Video (in German) after the break.

Hackers Unite! Cydia Merges with Rock

For jailbreakers of the iOS platform, these two stores have been the gate way to pissing Steve Jobs off. But now, after a year and a half of being rivals, Cydia and Rock unite, under SaurikIT. (the makers of Cydia) SaurikIT acquired Rock and will be moving not only the apps and licences from Rock over to the Cydia store, but also all of the software engineers will be combined as well to create the biggest and best unofficial app store on the iOS platform. This is a great thing for all jailbreakers, I’m sure, but users running 4.1 will have to wait a bit longer to see the new Cydia Store as there is still no jailbreak yet.

Posted by: Patrick

[ Post Tags: Apple, iOS, iOS 4.1, iPhone 4, iPod Touch, tracyandmatt.co.uk, Cydia, Jailbreaking ]

The iWatch Is Here

Let’s face it, it was going to happen. Somebody was going to make the iWatch and here it is. Made by ?Incipio, the Linq enables you to put the brand new iPod Nano on your wrist and wear it like a watch, and as far as I am aware, this is the first of many watch straps for the iPod Nano which will come to market. Not much to say execpt the strap is velcro and interchangeable, and your new iPod will be protected on your wrist as it protected by Incipio’s next gen polymer material which makes the housing nice and strong. Oh and it is available in 5 colours, in Black, Grey, Blue, White and Pink.

I was never really an iPod person, as all my media and music was stored on my phone, but this makes me really want to get one of the new Nanos! There is no word on pricing yet but expect it to be around the £20-£30 price point.

Posted by Patrick

[ Post Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod Nano, iWatch, Accessories ]

ARM detail new Cortex-A15 core processor design

Think your shiny new device with an Apple A4, a Sammy Hummingbird or Qualcomm Snapdragon is powerful? Well ARM are back once again to restore that feeling of inadequacy with the ridiculous new ‘Eagle’ SoC; the Cortex A15. Capable of up to 2.5GHz speeds, address up to a terabyte of memory, and with 4 cores (four!) the A15’s 32nm and 28nm fabrication means that these potent little chips are also more power efficient. Sadly, A15’s destined for smartphones will most probably be ‘only’ single or dual core versions at ‘only’ 1 to 1.5GHz. The faster quad-core versions mark ARM’s intentions to break into a bigger market, as these are destined for tablets, cars, set-top boxes and even small servers. It doesn’t stop there either – versions with eight cores or more are possible, though they would only live in enterprise infrastructure solutions. The named licensees so far include Texas Instruments, Samsung and ST Ericsson.

Now all we need are super-batteries to juice these up.

Posted by: Vince

Blaq for Twitter is coming

If you are a BlackBerry user you may have heard about a cool new Twitter app coming soon – called Blaq.

Well, if all goes to plan then it will be tomorrow that the app is launched and I can tell you that it is rather impressive.

We were lucky enough to be one of the few tech sites chosen worldwide to get an early copy to review so if you are going to consider downloading Blaq tomorrow you may want to check back with us in the morning as our full review will be online.

If you have been waiting to the app for sometime then all I can say is “Good things come to those who wait”.

Tomorrow is Blaq Friday!

Posted by: James

iOS 4.1 Available for Download

Well iOS 4.1 is finally here after Steve Jobs announced it’s new features last week at the annual Apple music event in San Francisco. Mr Jobs announced many things in iOS 4.1 including bug fixes to do with the proximity sensor and iOS 4 running incredibly slow on the iPhone 3G. But the main features of the new update are HDR photos, 720p upload over Wi-Fi and the debut of Game Center, Apple’s version of Xbox Live. See detailed description of new features here. .

iOS 4.1 is available for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 2nd gen, iPod touch 3rd gen, and the iPod touch 4th gen, so go download it now if you already haven’t! Still no word of Jailbreak yet though…

Posted by Patrick

Post Tags: Apple, iOS, iOS 4.1, iPhone 4, iPod Touch, tracyandmatt.co.uk