LG unveils flexible plastic e-paper display, aims for European launch next month

LG has made no secret of its fondness for flexible e-paper, but those dreams became a reality today, with the announcement of a six-inch display that promises to “revolutionize the e-book market.” The malleable plastic display sports a resolution of 1024 x 768 and can bend at an angle of up to 40 degrees. At just 0.7 millimeters thick, it’s about one-third thinner than similarly-specced glass displays, and weighs in at 14 grams — about half the weight of its glassy competition. LG also claims that the display is super durable, as evidenced by a series of successful drop tests from a height of 1.5 meters. The plan going forward is to supply the display to ODMs in China, in the hopes of bringing final products to Europe by “the beginning of next month.” For more details, check out the full press release after the break.

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Apple Quantifies Their iPad “Record Weekend”: 3 Million Sold In 3 Days

Earlier today, AT&T announced record sales and activation numbers for the new iPad. During the Apple dividend/buyback call, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke of a “record weekend” for the new iPad. Unfortunately, neither had actual numbers to share. And that was odd since normally when Apple has a new record number to crow about, crow they do. This was more of an Amazon maneuver where “records” are set by products selling 4x of another unstated number.

Turns out Tim Cook just didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Apple has just issued a release with their actual sales numbers for the first weekend of the new iPad. And the numbers are big. Very big. Three million iPads sold in the first three days big.

So how does that stack up to the previous versions of the iPad? Well, Apple didn’t officially announce first weekend sales for the iPad 2, likely because they were very constrained. Analyst estimates pegged the number sold somewhere between 500,000 to somewhere just north of 1 million. So even using the bullish numbers, this iPad launch was roughly 3x as large as the launch last year.

Two years ago, Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of sales. Again, the pace here seems to be about 3x that. For comparisons sake, Apple sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S in its first weekend late last year.

Over the weekend, a few analysts were jumping over one another to be the first to predict timid sales of the new iPad. Those analysts, once again, now look like huge assclowns.

The quote part of the release below:

“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold―the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”

Source: techcrunch

Samsung Galaxy S III To Launch In April?

While not launching the next Samsung flagship at MWC in Barcelona was probably the right choice for Samsung, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re itching with anticipation over when the Galaxy S III will show its pretty little edge-to-edge face.

We know most of the specs (well, rumored ones at least), which means we know we’ll see a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, a quad-core Samsung Exynos CPU running at 1.5GHz, and a little 4G LTE icon. What we don’t know, however, is when we’ll see any of this.

But reports are now leaking out of Korea, citing Samsung’s global marketing and advertising agency Cheil Worldwide, claiming that the phone we hate to wait for should show up in April. Things don’t get any more specific than that unfortunately, but this still gives us plenty to work with.

For one thing, we already knew that launch date rumors were circling around the March/April time frame. Secondly, Samsung itself confirmed that the phone would arrive “before Summer,” which leads us to believe that narrowing the launch period down to April seems correct.

We’ve also heard that the S III will launch simultaneously in over 50 major markets, rather than seeing an incremental roll-out like the S II. This means that whatever launch date is given will likely apply to us in the States, instead of Samsung’s home team getting early access.

Source: techcrunch

Rumor: Lenovo Prepping 10-inch Quad-Core Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet

The rumor mill never stops turning. Today, we have word from Engadget that Lenovo is prepping a new 10.1-inch tablet for release later this year. Why the fuss over a Lenovo tablet? Because this one will supposedly include Nvidia’s speedy new 1.66-GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 2GB of RAM. And to top it all off, this mystery tablet is also expected to run on Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Other tidbits include a rear-facing camera, a fingerprint scanner that could also be used as an optical joystick, and a USB port complete with the bane of our tech-centric lives, a port cover. Covering the tablet will be what Engadget referred to as a “Special Fusion-Skin Body” coating, although we’re still not too clear on what that means.

The last two Lenovo tablets we reviewed, the IdeaPad K1 and the ThinkPad Tablet, were both solid offerings that fell just short of being truly great devices due to their poor audio quality and bulky size. Here’s hoping this new 10-incher doesn’t suffer from the same flaws. There’s no word on when the tablet will be released here in the U.S., but we’ll let you know when we find out.

via Engadget

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime becomes official, packs in quad-core Tegra 3 and a 10-inch display

We have been hearing a lot about the Transformer Prime. First ASUS chairman Jonney Shih displayed it at AsiaD, then some more live shots surfaced, then came the FCC images, after that the benchmarks and the last we heard of it we found out that it will be delayed and coming in December instead. But now we finally have the official announcement that we have been waiting for.

ASUS today announced the Transformer Prime or the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, as it is officially called. It will be the first device in the world to pack in the new Nvidia Tegra 3 processor that has a quad-core CPU and 12-core GPU. Apart from that it also has 1GB RAM, a 10.1-inch IPS display, with a wide 178° viewing angle and Corning Gorilla Glass protection, micro HDMI port, 1.2 megapixel front camera, 8 megapixel rear camera with flash, 1080p video recording, auto-focus, F2.4 lens and backside illuminated CMOS sensor. All this in a device that is only 8.3mm thick and weighs 586g.

It will be available in 32GB and 64GB capacities and will also have a microSD card slot for additional storage space. It will be priced at $499 and $599 respectively. The keyboard dock will be an optional extra and will cost an additional $149.

The claimed battery life for the Transformer Prime is 12 hours but when combined with the keyboard dock it can be extended up to 18 hours. It will be sold in two colors, Amethyst Gray and Champagne Gold.

Initially the device will be sold with Android 3.2 Honeycomb with built-in apps such as SuperNote and Polaris Office but ASUS has promised that it will be getting the Ice Cream Sandwich update by December.

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Android Phones With 720p Displays Coming Soon

The announcement of LG’s Optimus LTE phone in South Korea heralded a new era in Android smartphones thanks to its new 1280 x 720p resolution display on a 4.5-inch screen. Described as a retina display for Android, it’s powered by LG’s Mobile HD Graphics Engine. The display itself is described by LG as a “True HD IPS” screen. IPS is a type of LCD display technology stands for in-plane switching and refers to the parallel placement of the liquid crystals in relation to the display glass.

The new device also features 329 ppi RGB resolution for crisper text and images; automatic color adjustments thanks to the Mobile HD Graphics Engine; and an HD Movie Editor.

This display capability will be built into Android 3.2, Ice Cream Sandwich, to make it easier for developers to program apps to scale to multiple screen sizes. Though the higher res display is meant more for tablets, it’s clear that phones are taking advantage of it, too.  In addition to the South Korean-only Optimus LTE, the forthcoming Google Nexus Prime is expected to include a similar 4.65-inch display with 1280 x 720p resolution.

Source: laptopmag

A Preview of the Next Android OS Update

New Apple iPhone 4S

Apple’s new iPhone 4S is just last year’s design loaded with a new brain and more memory. It will run your apps faster and Apple’s new iOS5′s Assistant, an artificial intelligence program that listens and interprets your orders, and a new camera.

It just looks exactly the same, but there’s plenty of changes inside:

Design

It’s the same old design as the iPhone 4. Nothing to say here. Same materials, same look.

The guts

• CPU and graphics: The iPhone 4S now has the iPad 2′s dual-core A5 CPU. It also has dual-core graphics, which will allow for faster and more detailed 3D. Apple claims this hardware combination makes the iPhone 4S seven times as fast as the iPhone 4 on games, and two times as fast on normal tasks.

• Internet speed: Like rumored, the new iPhone 4S runs on faster HSPA+ networks. That means that your telephone will download stuff faster from the Internet. Before it was up to 7.2 Megabits-per-second downloads. Now they claim two times as much: 14.4Mbps. This depends on the carrier, of course. I don’t know about you, but on AT&T I never get the maximum speed they claim.

Apple claims that, in real life situations, they are fast or “faster” as the competition’s phone on faster 4G networks. We will test that claim.

• New camera: There’s a new camera in the iPhone 4S. Its sensor is 8 megapixels, compared to the previous 5 megapixels. Much better than before. The most interesting thing is the sensor, however: It’s a CMOS backside illuminated sensor. Apple says that gets you 73% more light than the iPhone 4 sensor. The latter was already quite impressive, so I can’t wait to try this one. Apple has also remodeled the lens system, with five lens elements. They say they get now f2.4, which is very good.

The camera system is also faster than the previous version.

• New HD video: With the new sensor and new lens system, the camera now shots video at 1080p video with real-time image stabilization and temporal noise reduction.

• Battery life: Apple claims the new processor doesn’t impact the life of the battery. All the contrary. They say it will give you 8 hours talking battery life with 3G networks. If you set your phone to 2G, you will get 14 hours of talk time. 3G web browsing will give you six hours of battery life, while Wi-Fi access runs up to nine hours.

Video playback sets the battery at an impressive 10 hours maximum, while music goes up to 40 hours. These numbers best the iPhone 4′s previous theoretical battery life.

• New antenna design: Apple says that they have changed the antenna system, presumably to solve the signal attenuation problem.

• Storage: The iPhone comes now with 16, 32 and 64GB of storage.

Siri, the smart assistant

Apple is also including Siri in the iPhone 4S, which will only run in this model (and presumably the iPad 2). The reason is the need for a faster A5 processor.

It can call people, play music, send and receive text messages and emails, reading them with a natural human voice or set up events and meetings, remind you of stuff… You can also dictate in any app.

But the key about Siri, according to Apple, is that it isn’t just voice recognition. It reallyunderstands natural language and follows complex commands. It’s conversational too, so it will reply back to you and you can reply back to it. Think Enterprise’s computer vs the current crop of voice recognition software.

This thing actually seems smart, judging by the demos. It actually interprets what you are saying. You don’t talk to it using commands. You just talk to it like you would talk to another person. So instead of asking “tell me the weather today” you can just say “Do I need a raincoat?” and it will reply “It sure does look like rain today!” Or if you say “Wake me up tomorrow at 6am” it will automatically set up the alarm for you. Or “hey, remind me to buy milk later” and it will remind you to buy milk as you pass near a grocery store—yes, Siri is location aware.

Siri also pulls information from Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha to give you smart answers to your questions. You can even ask him for definitions, which Siri will read out loud.

Apple has not disclosed if Siri would be available for developers, but I don’t see why not. It’s only logical to expect all apps to be integrated in the assistant flow, so you can ask Siri to buy you two tickets for Avengers playing around 7 on a Sunday. That’s the kind of stuff this thing seems able to do, although we would have to try it to know.

Siri will only support English, French and German in this release. Apple says that they will keep expanding the services as time goes by.

Price and availability

The iPhone 4S would be available in black and white. The 16GB model would be $199, 32GB for $299 and 64GB for $399. The iPhone 4 would still be available in black for $99. All these prices require a contract.

You can pre-order the iPhone 4S on October 7. It will be available on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint on October 14.

iPhone 4S international availability : Initially, the iPhone 4S will only be available in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.

Source: gizmodo

Zune is dead, long live Zune

Like Zune’s own Business Development Manager once said, all consumer electronics products have a lifespan, and today the (not so long) lineage of dedicated Zune hardware expires not with a roar, but with a promise to honor its warranties. Tucked away in the inner chambers of the Zune support site lies a page spelling out Microsoft’s final words on the device, “Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy,” it says, “we will no longer be producing Zune players.” The Zune HD is survived by the Zune music service, which will continue to function with straggling standalone media players, as well as the Windows desktop, Windows Phone and Xbox platforms.
Via: WMPoweruser
Source: Zune

Cheap Tablets and Phones: Penny Wise, Tech Foolish by Avram Piltch

If you bought a craptastically cheap mobile device in the past year, I have just two words for you: I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you’ve had to carry a piece of unresponsive, slow-moving junk with you when you could have either spent a few more dollars  or waited a few months for prices to drop. On second thought, I take back my apology. You got what you deserve. If it looks like a cheap gadget, it is, and you get what you pay for.

There’s simply no good reason—other than a unique combo of impatience and stupidity—to buy a bargain-basement tablet with performance issues. Last Wednesday, we learned about the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, which, with its dual core CPU and extra-bright screen, should hammer the final nail in the coffin of tablet pretenders such as Coby, EFun, Pandigital, andVizio. But even before the discovery of Fire, there was no excuse to throw good money after bad slates.

Imagine how bad you’d feel today if you bought an Archos 7 tablet last year. Sure, it gave you Android for less than $200 at a time when a $500 iPad was the only other consumer slate out there, but you’d break your finger trying to tap the resistive touchscreen and the back was hot enough to sterilize Kevin Federline.

Fast forward a little more than a year. How would you feel now if last fall you’d foolishly purchased the Viewsonic G Tablet,whose slow-poke Tap n’ Tap (and tap and tap and tap) UI and bulky plastic chassis made it feel much cheaper than its $399 price tag? Today, an Eee Pad Transformer with a gorgeous Honeycomb UI and a dual-core CPU costs $399 or less.

Purchasing a feeble phone such as the small-screened Sharp FX Plus is even worse than buying a bargain-basement tablet, because you have to pay for data and carry the handset with you every day for a minimum of 1.5 to  2 years. Meanwhile, you’d be paying the same data fees per month for a state-of-the-art handset like the Samsung Galaxy S II.

Serving 18 to 24 months with a slow, low-res phone is worse than doing that time at the state pen with an overly affectionate cellmate. Over the course of 24 months, the typical wireless plan on one of the major four carriers will cost you anywhere from $1,700 to $2,400. So why on earth would you compromise on features or performance to save $100 or even $200, when the cost of the phone itself is less than 10 percent of your investment and you plan to use it every single day?

I can’t help but think about a friend who, in 2009, chose an HTC Droid Eris over a Motorola Droid, because the Eris—which had a much slower processor and lower-res screen—was free and the Motorola Droid cost $200. She’s been regretting her decision ever since, as her underpowered phone crashes constantly and makes molasses seem fast, but in 2011 she’s stuck paying for service on that clunker until the contract is up.

This month’s hot superphone is next month’s low-cost sale item. So why not take advantage? While you’re gawking at the $79.99 LG Enlighten with its pokey 3G connection, low-res 480 x 320 screen, and slow 800-MHz CPU, both the HTC Thunderbolt and the Samsung Droid Charge—big-screened LTE phones which cost over $200 when they came out in spring—are available for free on Amazon.com.  You’d have to be huffing screen wipes behind the Verizon store to choose a brand-new budget phone over a slightly older flagship device.

The golden rule for electronics purchases is this: If you want a gadget and can’t afford a decent one, either splurge or wait for a price drop. Never compromise on something you plan to use every day.

Source: blog.laptopmag.com